PC Makers Say Vista Is Not a Seller

TekkaDon writes "According to computer and component manufacturers, Vista is not the hotcake that they were hoping for. Take Acer's president, Gianfranco Lanci, who has just said that 'PC makers are really not counting on Vista to drive high demands for the industry.' Or Samsung Electronics, who now says that DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections, something that is being echoed by the industry as a whole. This seem to agree with Ars Technica article on the 20 million Vista copies sold as a 'huge success' by Microsoft, which can be accounted for by the natural growth of PC sales over the years."

Comments

Not a hotcake?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course not, it's a waffle with a side of Spam.

Re:Not a hotcake?

[RedElf]

It makes my laptop run hot enough to cook hotcakes on (something XP didn't do), does that count?

Re:Not a hotcake?

[Bin Naden]

Vista is a waffle-thin wafer and nerds are all named Creosote.

Re:Not a hotcake?

[HangingChad]

Spam, spam, eggs, spam and Vista.

Spam, eggs, Vista and spam.

Spam, spam, spam, Vista and spam.

With apologies to Monty Python and brought to you by the Department of Silly Walks.

Why would it drive demand?

[jibjibjib]

Most businesses won't buy Vista boxes until it's a bit more mature. Most consumers won't buy Vista boxes until their old box breaks. Why would you expect Vista to increase PC sales? Really, you'd expect it to decrease sales, because the price is higher than XP.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[FMota91]

Most consumers won't buy Vista boxes until their old box breaks. So that's why Microsoft made XP so stable!

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[edwardpickman]

Actually that's the whole point. If it was an in demand upgrade the numbers would be higher. I have no plans to upgrade current machines and may pick up a copy or two of XP to avoid shifting to it as long as possible with newly built machines. OSX Leopard may show the difference. Personally I can't wait and plan to upgrade my Mac machine ASAP. A lot of Mac users will upgrade especially those with newer machines. I'm also waiting on that to do a dual boot with XP. Vista may be a next generation OS but it's hardly a hot upgrade. Given the massive development cost that has to be a serious disappointment. Mac upgrades are pretty seamless where as everyone other than Microsoft are not recommending upgrading XP they all recommend doing fresh installs. That's got to give everyone pause on upgrading XP machines. Love it or hate it Apple is doing it the right way.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[nbritton]

"Why would you expect Vista to increase"?

Because two months after XP came out it had 9% market share, Vista currently has less then 2%.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[diegocgteleline.es]

Why would you expect Vista to increase PC sales?

It would if Vista was different than XP and very innovative, but it isn't. For most of people, Vista is just XP with a different theme.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[iminplaya]

Most consumers won't buy Vista boxes until their old box breaks.

That can be arranged

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly, it is already ahead of Linux which has been trying to get that market share for years and years.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[PopeRatzo]

Most consumers won't buy Vista boxes until their old box breaks.

My old box broke and I dumped Vista the very first day. It added nothing to my experience, my productivity, or the performance of my system. In fact, in every category it was inferior to Windows XP Pro SP2. Even without the DRM support (which was a deal-breaker all by itself) and the fact that none of my most important productivity apps run on it (still), I just couldn't come up with a single reason to keep Vista on that machine.

The good news is that with a Core 2 duo, SATA hard drives with RAID support, 4 meg RAM and a X1650 video card, XP performs much better than ever, especially with the audio and video production apps I use.

If Microsoft were to put out a new version of XP with an updated interface and more solid security, they'd have a winner, but Vista is a terrible product with absolutely nothing that compels one to purchase it.

Of course, if all new computers have Vista, then Microsoft will sell a lot of copies, but I could not in good conscience recommend it as an upgrade, and if XP is still an option, that would be the way I'd go.

Hell, the University I work at just found out that Blackboard has problems on Vista, so they definitely won't be upgrading.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is just XP with a different theme.

While I have no doubt that you and the legions of other *nix fanbois here desperately want that to be true (and, despite all the howling y'all do everytime you think someone's dissing linux by telling you what a pain in the ass it is to use, it's sort of ironic that you're all first in line to scream out any piece of FUD you can dream up about Windows - "do as I say, not as I do" - I suppose eh?) Nevertheless, I digress... I've been running Vista for over a year and it is a marked improvement over XP and anyone who says patently STUPID things like you've just done obviously (a) doesn't really know, (b) has a counter-agenda they're promoting, or (c) is just repeating the FUD they've been told b/c it suits them (which is something of a "both of the above" kind of answer).

BTW: My favourite post in this thread is the AC who pointed out that the "flop" that you're all crowing about vis-a-vis Vista's market share after ~60 days is a higher percentage share of the desktop market than linux has EVER had (unless you only count /.'rs).

Desktop Linux is NEVER going to be a huge hit for neophyte users until you can deliver an operating system WITHOUT A COMPILER that can run any piece of software that you buy or you choose to download. (Hint: Microsoft has been doing that for 20+ years).

Lastly, the VAST bulk of problems Vista experiences today (60 days out from release) is coming from two directions:

1. Drivers: For years OEM's have been writing the worst PoS software imaginable. They cut corners all over the place and "make do" with whatever bare-minimum crap they could get away with. Sadly, despite the fact that this practice has been the source of the vast majority of XP BSoD issues, it's historically been Windows that takes the hit for it. So, in Vista MS decided to toughen up the kernel and driver requirements, and now the OEM's have gone all pissy b/c now they have to write half-way decent software for a change.
   
2. Software: Vista's toughened up on security. For those of you who're new here, this has been a major Windows gripe on /. for about 10 years or so. (Disclaimer: I realise that, for this crowd, if it wasn't that, it would have been something, I'm fully aware that if Windows had been gifted-unto-man, made-perfect-by-God-himself, this crowd would have found SOMETHING that made it crap to them..) In any case, everyone here has, of course, known all along that increasing O/S security would come at the cost of backward compatibility, but if you go back and look at what's been said here for the 4 or so years since XP's arrival, the word was has been that MS should've toughened up Windows a decade ago. Well they've done it now, and guess what, as expected, it broke shit, just as we all knew it would, but now the complaint is that "it won't run my PoS legacy software app". (also, now that it's being addressed, the extra security's kind of a pain in the butt).

In answer to these two things, I'd point out that developers have had access to Vista RC's for over a year. ANYONE who is running software today that isn't Vista compatible should be calling up the vendor and asking WTF they've been doing for the past freaking year? At this point, there's really very little excuse whatsoever for not having Vista ready software, except that the Software and Hardware Vendors have spent the last year+ with their thumbs up their asses and when Feb 1st came around collectively went, "wha? Vista? we have to update our crap? we had no idea...."

-AC

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[Anonymous Coward]

I like you. Smart /.ers are rare.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[superpulpsicle]

That 2% market share comes from Dell and other pre-installs. I do not know of a single person at work/home or anywhere else that bought Vista. It is pathetically sad that viruses nowadays are so bad, people don't want to take chance on even buying a new product.

Some day some virus will be so nasty, vista would be the only choice because M$ refuse to patch XP. But this kind of strategy kills consumer trust.

Re:Why would it drive demand?

[Virgil Tibbs]

you're brave. vista using /.ers are brave!

A month and no success?

[beckerist]

Let's see...it was released generally to the public less than 2 months ago. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that qualifies as a good enough sample time to really see a trend. It's a fad, it'll die down once that aspect is gone. It will also be the newest thing, which means everyone is going to start programming for that now (at least the bigger companies...)

Considering there's not even a driver for my Wireless Card (Linksys, common one too...) I think there's still some time we need to wait before jumping to these apocalyptical conclusions.

Re:A month and no success?

[gravesb]

True, but some previous releases of Windows did drive computer sales and had large numbers after such a short time. Windows 95, for instance. I don't think any reasonable predictions about Vista expected the same thing, but some unreasonable ones did.

Re:A month and no success?

[Zaphod2016]

I disagree. Am I the only one around here who remembers the round-the-block lines for Windows 95 back when it first came out? Compared to that degree of "Star Wars-esque" popularity, Vista is a flop.

Re:A month and no success?

[beckerist]

Your options in 1995 were....well...Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and maybe a few other distros that noob's (like me at the time) didn't even know existed. We're in a different world than 1995 and not only are we smarter, we have more choices and it still all costs money! I'm not saying that Vista isn't a flop, I'm merely saying that it's too early to tell.

Re:A month and no success?

[Skidge]

What I remember about Windows 95 is a four inch stack of 3.5" floppies that I switched in and out for a few hours during installation. Now that was a good time.

Re:A month and no success?

[mysticgoat]

I think there's still some time we need to wait before jumping to these apocalyptical conclusions.

I fail to see why Vista's possible failure should be seen as "apocalyptical". Ford survived the Edsel and the Pinto fiascos, IBM survived the PS2 insanity and OS/2. Big companies sometimes make big mistakes. If Vista proves to be a mistake, then if Microsoft has been managing its resources properly, it will be able to pick itself up and tag along after whoever emerges as the new market leader. Nothing particularly apocalyptic, or even catastrophic, about that. Merely a normal change from industry leader to trailing the pack, that every corporation that has any history has experienced from time to time.

If the reader thinks that a failure by Microsoft would somehow mean the collapse of cyberspace, then the reader should take a look at Unix and Ubuntu. Those two OSs bracket everything Microsoft has ever produced: one on the high end, the other on the low end. Both do what they do extremely well. If some kind of void begins to open where Microsoft products used to be, it will be filled quite rapidly from above and below. No worries there.

The only thing approaching disaster is the economic well being of people who have invested too heavily in Microsoft stock. But that would not be the fault of Vista failing to catch on. That would mostly be the fault of a management style characterized by chair-throwing, monkey-dancing, potty-mouthed threats of using lethal force against people Microsoft management doesn't like. Microsoft would probably be better off if it had a businessman at the helm.

If Vista proves to be a failure, it won't be apocalyptic, nor catastrophic, nor even particularly harmful. We'll all just continue to use Win XP until we're ready to hop over to Ubuntu and Wine, or IBM resurrects OS/2, or Apple decides to market to just plain folks instead of concentrating on the rich snobs.

Re:A month and no success?

[mcpkaaos]

which means everyone is going to start programming for that now (at least the bigger companies...)

Not really true, so long as sales are dismal and compatibility issues overshadow Vista's features (assuming there are new features). It's a simple matter of ROI. Questionable sales + new, unproven APIs (new Winsock, anyone?) do not make for strong appeal. I'm a programmer, and most of my career has been spent on various Windows platforms. Vista is making me finally switch to Linux full-time (can't wait to check out KDE 4!). I wouldn't say Vista is the sole reason as much as the last straw. I've already picked up Python in an attempt to ween myself off of such proprietary tools as C# and ASP.NET. Yes, I have tried Mono. No, I do not have the same high hopes for it as other developers seem to have. In any case, I rather enjoy the dynamic nature of Python programming. Plus, there is something to be said for writing a few thousand lines of code and being fairly certain that your program will run on many different platforms without modification. No .NET developer can say that, Mono or no Mono. That said, Django and a seemingly endless selection of open, 3rd party libraries really rock my world.

Considering there's not even a driver for my Wireless Card (Linksys, common one too...) I think there's still some time we need to wait before jumping to these apocalyptical conclusions.

In my opinion, that is one of the motivators behind such conclusions. If you cannot find a driver for commonly available hardware (how many millions of Linksys WiFi cards are out there?), how complete (e.g., usable) can Vista possibly be? At what price?

MS really dropped the ball, and it's plain to see. People aren't jumping to conclusions, they are simply pointing out the obvious.

Cheers,

Michael

Re:A month and no success?

[cyphercell]

While I agree an apocalyptic future doesn't seem likely, I would contend that it is possible. Compare it to other monopolies and things look a bit different, Ma Bell, Standard Oil, these two companies were the only source for things that were desperately needed. Microsoft is different they sell software, something easily replaced by competitor products. The talk lately hasn't been about whether Vista will sell, cause it will, the talk has been about whether or not the industry needs or even wants it. The answer is that if Microsoft were still offering XP through normal channels then Vista would barely be selling at all, a full billion dollar, five year investment flop. This isn't like the PS3 having trouble competing with the Wii this Vista failing to compete with Windows XP. This failure isn't secluded either (like Windows 2000 vs. XP) it's mainstream, common people are not and do not want to upgrade.

Re:A month and no success?

[smash]

A few reasons I can think of the lack of queues off the top of my head...

Well, in 1995 you had dos or Windows 3.x (which was shit).

Windows 3.1 was totlly useless for gaming, so basically if you ran games, you used DOS. Windows 95 was a *major* technology leap. Irrespective of how crusty and dodgy the kernel was, it brought in DirectX - which meant that there was finally a reliable way to support video for gaming at higher than 320x240 res without needing to re-write large parts of your game for every sound/video card and game controller on the market. Not to mention a reliable memory configuration to write your game (no more worrying about extended vs expanded, conventional memory limits, etc).

It also brought in long file names, which was a major plus for business use.

Vista makes several technology leaps as well, but they're not as "visible" or impacting on the immediate effect to the user. The fact is, that Windows XP is "good enough" for most people to not bother upgrading until it's convenient, rather than the day of release.

Also, keep in mind that back in 1995 there was very little in the way of ordering software on-line, which i'm quite sure a lot of people buying vista would be doing. Why queue in 2007?

Re:A month and no success?

[smash]

Heh.

The last version of office before office 97 (4.2?) came on about 25 floppy disks from memory :D

Re:A month and no success?

[Andy Dodd]

I can't remember if it was Office or Windows, but I remember a 40+ floppy stack at some point...

Re:A month and no success?

[smash]

Ahaha... maybe it was 45... was so long ago, only ever installed it once :)

Re:A month and no success?

[iminplaya]

Okay, if you like to play "sea crab" with the floppy drive, get ready to feed 41 disks to install the Video Toaster on an Amiga. I do believe somebody has that beat, but I can't remember.

Re:A month and no success?

[CastrTroy]

I don't think it wasn windows 95. I remember getting a copy of windows 95 off of someone, and it was only around 13 disks.

Re:A month and no success?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you cannot find a driver for commonly available hardware (how many millions of Linksys WiFi cards are out there?), how complete (e.g., usable) can Vista possibly be?

How the f*ck is it Microsoft's fault that LinkSys (or any other hardware/software vendor) couldn't get their act together enough in the past year+ (when Vista RC's became easy-to-get for developers) to write a halfway decent driver for Vista? /.'rs are constantly complaining about how vendors won't provide decent driver support for *nix. But now, as it relates to Vista, you're telling me that it's Microsoft's fault (how typically convenient)?

It has ALWAYS been the Vendor's responsibility to provide drivers for their hardware: If you can't get decent Vista drivers for LinkSys hardware, get on the phone to them and ask 'em wtf is their major-malfunction? (Hint: Cisco's purchase notwithstanding, it's LinkSys and they're way up there on the list of the "we write the shitiest drivers we can possibly get away with" companies and I'm SURE Vista's tougher stance on drivers is making them at best, petulant.)

-AC

Re:A month and no success?

[operagost]

I used OS/2, so I was doing those things in 1994 (and my smart friends who had gotten into OS/2 2.x had been doing it even longer).

Re:A month and no success?

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

Nobody's going to start programming for that anytime soon. Not even Microsoft.
When 95 came out, everybody did because it was damned well obviously much better than 3.11.
Nobody programmed for 98.
Or 2k.
Or ME.
Or XP.
Pretty much everything still ran fine on 95.
Just why exactly would a game dvelopment company voluntarily shut itself out of the 99% of the market that doesn't run Vista by developing for DX10?
Yeah, okay, because Microsoft gave them more money than they would make selling the game...

But everybody? DX10 is the one and only API that allows developers to do stuff they couldn't before! .NET is XP compatible!

Forget it.

Re:A month and no success?

[pwizard2]

Speaking of MSFT stock, it has been in a downtrend since late January, when Vista came out. You can see that just by looking at the stock chart.

Connection? I think so.

Re:A month and no success?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know of this call center in Oregon that put out a bunch of ads for vista tech support jobs. They hired a pile of people... They were getting 1 call per hr. MS eventually had to end the contract and the call center laid off a bunch of the techs or gave them other jobs. I'm sure they're not the only call center MS contracted out to and had to withdraw from.

Re:A month and no success?

[aaronl]

Yes, previously releases except for WinME. Unfortunately, the manufacturers didn't remember that product, or they may have considered the possibility of Vista being another MS failure. Then again, they went for WinME full steam ahead, and forgot about MS BOB.

Win95 had a huge uptake because Windows 3.1 sucked. There really hasn't been another rollout that's had such a fast uptake. People are still running Win98 and Win2000 in large numbers, though most people are running XP. The majority using WinME have moved to pirating a version that actually works.

Re:A month and no success?

[Andrei D]

I remember that when Windows 98 was out, people in U.S. were waiting FOR HOURS in front of the stores to grab a copy.Now this is what I call a success. Microsoft has a lot of guts to call Vista a success too, relying on the fact that people nowadays buy more computers and they came with Vista preinstalled, most often, against people's will.

Re:A month and no success?

[jZnat]

Microsoft's business depends on Windows and Office in such a way that if either of them were to fail, they would be in huge trouble. Ford and IBM had many other products and services, so flops like those didn't screw them over.

Re:A month and no success?

[frdmfghtr]

Yes, previously releases except for WinME. Unfortunately, the manufacturers didn't remember that product, or they may have considered the possibility of Vista being another MS failure. Then again, they went for WinME full steam ahead, and forgot about MS BOB.

I think the manufacturers "forgot" about WinME out of self-preservation. The brain can "lock away" traumatic experiences to prevent one from going insane; the collective brains are doing the same thing here.

Re:A month and no success?

[mysticgoat]

Microsoft's business depends on Windows and Office in such a way that if either of them were to fail, they would be in huge trouble.

True enough.

But to re-iterate,

1. if Microsoft cannot survive the failure of Vista or MS Office 2007, the cause would not due to those failures but due to a failure in its approach to managing corporate assets;
2. and such a failure would not be that big a deal: with its awesomely ridiculous cash reserves, MS would probably weather the storm with nothing worse than a stockholder revolt. Everyone else would simply stick with WinXP and earlier MS Office versions until we figured out how to best devide the enterprize's workload between Google Apps and OpenOffice, and between Macs and Ubuntus.

The main thing to remember is that there are lots of candidates to replace either of MS's only significant offerings. This kind of thing happens all the time in business, and life as we know it will continue, with or without Microsoft's current corporate structure.

Re:A month and no success?

[mrchaotica]

Don't forget classic Mac OS.

Re:A month and no success?

[mrchaotica]

Floppies? By the time Windows 95 came out, even my so-low-end-that-it-was-actually-"refurbished" Packard Bell 486 had a CD-ROM drive! And yes, I did install Win95 on it from a CD (in fact, that was the last -- and only -- version of Windows that I ever willingly bought).

please hold for DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

truly this article will be the most obvious article of the millenium.

Re:please hold for DUH

[RedElf]

truly this article will be the most obvious article of the millenium.

You must be new here!

if it aint broke

[night_flyer]

why fix it?
most windows machines out in circulation now would need an upgrade for vista.
Unless you are buying a new machine, why bother?

Re:if it aint broke

[flyingfsck]

You mean: If it ain't broke, why break it? Since Vista isn't going to make a working PC work better, it can only make it worse. MS is the only OS manufacturer that consistently brings out upgrades that are slower than the previous version. That is just plain stupid.

Re:if it aint broke

[Chabil Ha']

I did buy a new machine today, but I wiped Vista and put XP on it. HP didn't offer XP drivers for my particular model, but when you go peruse the drivers of earlier models of the same product family, there they are. Since the hardware is essentially the same, that's what I went for. The fact that I could 'downgrade' was the motivating factor in my purchase. I simply made a backup set of restore disks for the time that Vista is mature enough to use, and when that day arrives I install my 'free upgrade' to Vista.

In a few years.

poor drivers = poor customer perception

[smartyknickers]

What I'm seeing is a fear of Vista - the same MS-bashing that happened when XP came out. But what joe-public aren't seeing is that most of the faults are just poor drivers and that vista really *is* a large step up!

I think once the dust has settled and there are more success-cases around then momentum will rapidly pick up!

(example #1 = me. I've used Linux on the desktop for the last 5 years - and it's Vista that's making me change back to Windows. Can't even be arsed to repair my aging Mac Powerbook. Yes it is still windows, but its such a giant leap forward...)

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, most of the faults of linux nowadays are just poor drivers - you hear a zillion complaints about complicated installation and driver configuration issues, reviewers seldom bother to get as far as e.g. a KDE (or GNOME) Compiz or Beryl desktop, which makes vista's "new" interface look like a trabant. There's a certain hypocrisy at work: In the windows weenie world, Microsoft doesn't get the blame when hardware manufacturers supply shoddy drivers. Yet when hardware manufacturers fail to support linux, it's always "linux sux"...

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[smartyknickers]

Agreed - and this was one of the things I got fed up of putting up with (I just want sound to work, its 2007 for chrissakes...)

In this instance though I'd disagree; MS are absolutely getting the blame and perception of Vista is v.poor as a result (among non-techie people anyway).

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[Anonymous Coward]

Good joke, thanks, you made me laugh heartily. I'd moderate you up, but I decided not to when I realized you posted one day early. Repost your joke on April 1st about Vista being an advancement, and then I'll mod you.

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[smash]

Oh yes, I agree 100%, some of Linux's problems are driver development.

The difference is, however is that because Microsoft put out Vista, the drivers *will* get fixed, one way or another, and in pretty short order.

Will that happen with Linux? Eventually, yes maybe. The situation is definitely a hell of a lot better than it was 11 years ago when i started using Linux, but it's a long way behind.

Is it fair that virtually all the Linux drivers are written by volunteers, often without hardware specs? No, of course not - but in the real world, "but that's not fair?!" won't cut it. Results are what people are concerned about.

Linux really is *almost there* and once the hardware devs jump on board in a big way, it will get critical mass and start becoming more competitive. Unfortunately at the moment it's on the edge of that "chicken and eg" scenario where hardware (and commercial software) devs won't justify linux driver development for a small market, and the market is small because of driver/commercial software development.

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[turing_m]

The difference between computers 11 years ago and today is that the average system specification is much higher today. 11 years ago (I also tried linux for the first time a year or so later) EVERYTHING was too slow. Productivity, communications, web browsing, multimedia, games, all of it was too slow.

Now, a 4 year old system will handle the bulk of that with ease. There are still several reasons to upgrade, including snappy video editing, having a quiet, economical and eco-friendly applicance, and those who desire the latest games. But this is a much smaller subset of users. And those users now have an incentive to switch with MS malware issues.

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[Deorus]

> The difference is, however is that because Microsoft put out Vista, the drivers *will* get fixed, one way or another, and in pretty short order.

Put your money where your mouth is, buy Vista 64! ;)

'Nuff said.

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[drsmithy]

(example #1 = me. I've used Linux on the desktop for the last 5 years - and it's Vista that's making me change back to Windows. Can't even be arsed to repair my aging Mac Powerbook. Yes it is still windows, but its such a giant leap forward...)

Now this I don't get. Certainly, Vista is a massive update to Windows, but most of the improvements are under the hood, low impact (to the typical user) and non-obvious. If you're technically competent enough to have been running Linux full time for ~5 years, you would have already worked around the obvious things Vista changes (eg: not defaulting to Administrator).

Can you elaborate what Vista has - that XP doesn't - that is compelling to you ?

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[Kjella]

In the windows weenie world, Microsoft doesn't get the blame when hardware manufacturers supply shoddy drivers. Yet when hardware manufacturers fail to support linux, it's always "linux sux"...

I guess it's something with the exception vs rule thing. Most Windows drivers work, simply because they're the bread and butter of the company. And even if they're poor, you can be damn sure they exist. So against that standard, the company gets blasted.

Every so often they do a Linux review where they stick a Linux CD in some random laptop, and almost every time there's something not working out of the box. And by "not working" it might mean "buggy" half the time and "no driver" the other. Readers don't want long technical compatibility lists, they want answers. "Don't buy from company $foo" is a simple answer. But if there's a dozen companies with different non-working bits the simple answer is "Linux isn't ready for the desktop".

Part of the reasno why it's this lame is that there's hardly a preinstalled Linux to be found. If that was common you could tell the reviewers "Well, doh. Get a 'ready for Linux' laptop and try again". But that's not the reality - what do you tell people? Things like "Try a live CD". You don't really have any good alternatives without asking people to dig around forums and whatever for what works and not. It might change soon but we're not there yet.

Re:poor drivers = poor customer perception

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is, however is that because Microsoft put out Vista, the drivers *will* get fixed, one way or another, and in pretty short order.

oh, if by "fixed" drivers you include dropped support for so-called obsolete hardware like all those winmodems and winprinters that didn't survive the transition from 95/98/ME to 2000/XP then I fully agree with you.

Balmer

[rasputin465]

Well maybe if Steve Ballmer went this crazy more often more people would be interested in Vista.

...or maybe that could go the other way too.

Re:Balmer

[Mercedes308]

You know, without bothering to look into it I always thought those Steve Ballmer jokes were just that, a joke. But after seeing that video all I could think was "Oh my fucken god almighty, this dude has got a serious speed habit"

Re:Balmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Coke, not speed. Speed is the poor man's coke, and Ballmer might be an evil fucking cunt, but he's not poor.

Re:Balmer

[aaron p. matthews]

Clearly Microsoft needs to go back to their old style of promoting Windows:

Exhibit A: Windows 1.0
- http://youtube.com/watch?v=GL4hyATkQ74

Exhibit B: Windows 386
- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4915875929 930836239

I mean it worked before....... right?

Re:Balmer

[rasputin465]

Exhibit B... wow. I think the caption says it best: "Boring until the 7 minute mark when the production is taken over by crack-smoking monkeys." Seriously, wtf is going on? And why does she change into those hideous clothes and then change back? I'm so confused...

Re:Balmer

[edwardpickman]

I take it they upped his medication since then. Either that or some one finally let him try upgrading an XP system to Vista, that could explain the buzz kill.

Re:Balmer

[dogger]

thanks man, that was some good material:) It is even more funny because people were seriously cheering. Love it!

Re:Balmer

[The One and Only]

And why does her document have gratuitous monochrome bitmaps of the space shuttle?

Re:Balmer

[mrchaotica]

The Windows 95 launch video is rather apropos as well... "You make a grown man cry," indeed!

Re:Balmer

[mrchaotica]

Whoops, forgot the link

Many companies are holding back

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Many universities are holding back on Vista because of compatibility issues with Blackboard software. Many companies find there is no urgent "must get" feature in Vista, and due to compatibility issues they too are having a moratorium on new purchases. And all the big PC vendors have completely retooled and are not selling XPs anymore. Now a days they dont make PCs before they sell, so there wont be too much of unsold PCs on the warehouses. But the parts do pile up. This might actually pressure the companies like Dell to sell naked PCs. But ultimately people will relent and start using Vista. Is there going to be an active market for XP licenses? Will WGA prevent people from buying ne naked PCs and loading old XP licenses?

Re:Many companies are holding back

[Lengyel]

It was big news in February that MIT is not migrating to Vista. That's still true, and other universities, such as CUNY, aren't interested in upgrading their Windows boxes to Vista.

Re:Many companies are holding back

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Sure, the big vendors would love to sell Vista only. They thought that about XP, too... until several major corporate customers told them where to go. Then, suddenly, places like Dell were still selling Win2K and Microsoft was extending support for older business OSes.

Given that it tooks several years for XP to overtake Win2K, and a very significant proportion of businesses have never made the switch, I'm afraid your/Microsoft's theory that everyone will just move sooner or later may or may not hold. And that's before the big scare stories about how "your computer can be disabled remotely" and so on start really freaking out the big CIOs...

Re:Many companies are holding back

[tftp]

Is there going to be an active market for XP licenses? Will WGA prevent people from buying ne naked PCs and loading old XP licenses?

I'm unsure what you are talking about. There *is* a market of XP licenses already, and it always was, and probably will be for a while. I know because I build XP boxes, and the price of a license is today quite acceptable, just about the cost of a motherboard, or about 1/3 of a decent CPU, or about 15% of the total cost of the hardware. Since these licenses are 100% legitimate the WGA will not stop you.

Re:Many companies are holding back

[binaryspiral]

"And all the big PC vendors have completely retooled and are not selling XPs anymore."

That's not true at all. Dell, IBM/Lenovo, HP, and all the rest still sell XP / XP Pro units. They'd be damn drooling retarded not to... if corporate networks aren't using Vista - but they're buying new computers, the first one to stop selling XP will loose their shirt.

There isn't a single reason (from I.T. point of view) to upgrade to Vista until Microsoft pulls the plug on XP support... which is a real long time.

Re:Many companies are holding back

[Anonymous Coward]

Been using w2k on the legacy apps at work in Xen without issue.

It'll probably be a couple months before we finish porting everything to linux and finally get rid of the w2k vms.

How many are unused Vista upgrades?

[RyanFenton]

Not that it has been easy to order a copy of the upgrade - but I wonder how many of those 20 million copies of Vista that have been sold are actually the $12 (after shipping) upgrades one could get when they ordered a copy of XP before Vista was sold. I know I did that, because if I needed to use an application that needed Vista, I could throw it on for that case.

I certainly know I'm not going to install Vista unless I absolutely have to, for the same reason I only switched to XP with my new computer a few months ago. It'll be interesting to see when the first pieces of Vista-only hardware come out - likely new DirectX-oriented video cards.

Ryan Fenton

Re:How many are unused Vista upgrades?

[MadnessASAP]

This is just out of curiosity but where the hell did you find a program that NEEDS Windows Vista? I wouldn't think that it has even been around long enough for people to start developing applications on it much less making it a requirement.

Re:How many are unused Vista upgrades?

[mrchaotica]

Check your reading comprehension. He said "if he needed," in the hypothetical sense. He doesn't have one that needs it now, but he got it anyway because it was cheap for a limited time and one might need it in the future.

I don't see people rushing out to buy hw now

[gelfling]

None of the retailers have any incentives to cause anyone to run out and plunk down new cash for a new machine, just because it runs Vista. Here is it the beginning of April and the sales cycle is going to be flat until at least mid August when the kiddies go back to school. At that point, unless there are new incentives in place I think a combination of school discounts on XP/Hardware, schools becoming more software agnostic and competitive pricing from Apple will be a real threat to that segment too.

But I am always called insane here at /. when I say things like this. So don't listen to me. Just keep being fanboys.

Re:I don't see people rushing out to buy hw now

[cyphercell]

Funny I don't think you're that far off, all you have to do to get an XP box is go to the business section of any large vendor. The more people that know that, the more it will happen. Come school time I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't at least somewhat common knowledge, it was a well kept secret that you could get Windows 2000 for a long time after XP came out. I don't think the secret will be that well kept this time.

This is not news

[pcgamez]

I don't think that anyone familiar with the PC market was expecting anything different. Windows Vista is not a revolutionary OS, it is an improvement on what most people already have. Simply put, there is no reason for the vast majority of consumers to purchase a new computer for the sake of Vista.

Rubber demand curve

[zoftie]

All it takes, is time. It may well be that apple with parallels and in future some deeper emulation integration with windows, will drive demand for people who abandon insecure windows environments for usable OS X. As Microsoft fails to meet its own promises, people will be forced to look elsewhere. Perhaps OS X with its demanding video applications will drive the next big rise in sales.

I am not analyst, but stagnant windows platform isn't living up to its promises, people will be forced to look elsewhere. Elsewhere as in Ubuntu desktop, OS X. Whichever. It will take time.

Re:Rubber demand curve

[photomonkey]

For those of us not afraid of trying something different technology-wise, I agree with what you're saying. Some people might see this as a reason to go out and try a different OS.

But Microsoft has no reason in the immediate future to look at, or care about, those numbers. Most people will be bootstrapped into Vista when their old box dies not because they really want it, but because Dell, HP, and whatever you can get at Best Buy all come with Vista pre-installed.

Sure, you can apply for the Microsoft Tax Credit from OEM vendors, or you could build your own box and throw Ubuntu on it or buy an Apple, but the simple fact is that the majority of people just plain won't.

The average consumer probably only cares about a few of the 'things' a computer can do: email, word processing, web, pr0n (and other basic multimedia) and printing. Their current machines can do all that stuff, so why buy a new one or upgrade just the OS? They'll wait until their current box craps out (or gets so loaded with viruses/spyware that they'd just as soon ditch it as fix it) and then get whatever is sold en masse by Dell, HP, Gateway and Best Buy. Hell, if Dell sold the majority of computers with BeOS installed, BeOS would be 'the next big thing'.

Corporate IT departments care about compatibility, stability, security and ease-of-support among other things. Mom and Pop end-users likely don't know enough about computers in general to even assess IF the new OS really is an advantage over the old one.

For ~95% of the desktops sold, Windows is the only easy option. Even beyond that, the big PC vendors will offer $399 desktops with free printers, monitors and even digital cameras and laptops for $599. Those are not price points that Apple seems to even care about, especially on the laptop side. All of those cheap-ass, kid's-going-back-to-school-and-I-need-a-cheap-comp uter boxes will ensure that Microsoft stays on top with Vista for at least one more OS iteration, regardless of how good or bad the OS actually is.

On the business side, I know very few places that upgrade to anything new immediately. The costs are too high, and the risks too great. In fact, many, many businesses can get by with older hardware and Win2000 or XP for a number of years to come. What does the AVERAGE employee do on a computer? Browse the web, type emails and type memos with the occasional PowerPoint presentation thrown in there. 6-year-old hardware with 2k or XP is perfectly capable of all that. Again, Vista will only permeate the business world on a large scale when it's been out for a while, is completely (as close as it ever gets) stable and, most importantly, is really the only OS available.

Microsoft doesn't really have to worry about making leaps and bounds with its new OSes. They will make money if only because of Microsoft's distribution deals with the big computer vendors.

I'm not saying Microsoft will be around forever, but they can ride the tide for a long time before they have to worry. If WinMe sold, so too will Vista.

But the article is right. In and of itself, Vista itself is not a seller.

Yeah! Deal on that Defective by Design...

[rtrifts]

DRM and Defective by Design has not just ticked off the usual pro-Linus /. crowd.

This time, it scared off a lot of hardcore mainstream computer enthusiasts. When the tech geeks in your lif badmouth the product and don't want to install it unless they have to - what the hell did you expect would happen with the average Joe computer user?

Being involved in Windows development, I can tell you that there is NO WAY we are creating for Vista only. We'll be able to run on it - but there's no way I would bet the company on the success of Vista. Not when I don't have to.

Re:Yeah! Deal on that Defective by Design...

[TropicalCoder]

" DRAM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections"

Skipping through the intro quickly, I read that as " DRM demand has not matched anyone's predictions based on Vista's now failed projections" and thought it was saying that lack of interest in DRM was a contribution to Vista not selling as well as they hoped.

Well, this is pretty interesting:

[zappepcs]

We can draw from several possible conclusions from such numbers:

1 - WGA is actually working, and the 20 million people who actually DO want to pay for windows have bought their copies (note, I have no stats to back up that statement)

2 - People really aren't convinced that Windows Vista is the answer to their software woes

3 - It just fscking costs too much to upgrade from an OS that seems to be working just fine right now.

4 - Too many people are trying to consolidate bills after the holiday seasons to spend more money.

5 - Businesses are waiting for SP2 (I think they should have just launched with Vista SP2)

6 - Statistics and studies only show you what they want you to see

7 - Viola! Windows Vista pretty much sucks... - this one seems quite plausible?

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[the linux geek]

Actually, WGA isn't really working. There's currently a crack floating around that simulates an OEM BIOS, and always checks out A-OK on WGA checks and associated scum.

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[zappepcs]

Well, that sounds like you are saying that the only people really put at a disadvantage by WGA and anti-piracy measures are honest users that weren't pirating software anyway?

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[smash]

Exactly. As is and has been the case with every form of copy-protection ever devised. You pay to be disadvantaged.

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[RobertM1968]

6 - Statistics and studies only show you what they want you to see

MS is counting the Vista Upgrade coupons into those numbers (the 20 million). NOT the used coupons... the total coupons "given out" (ie: 12 million PCs sold during the qualifying period, 12 million coupons... and 8 million machines with Vista or copies purchased to upgrade - figures for example purposes only).

What are the actual figures? Who knows? MS isnt telling. And to count the "coupons" would require the OEMs and retailers to produce their numbers alongside MS's - which hasnt happened either.

The "facts" in MS's claims are thus irrelevant. Oh, and who cares? Vista will be the de-facto standard on PCs soon enough. And yes, there are vendors selling XP machines (usually XP Pro for businesses), but I am expecting that will phase out as well. An expectation that Vista would drive the market is retarded... some retailers though, counted on MS' promise that it would (a promise I heard them give to CompUSA - who sold 1/10th the machines and Vista upgrades they had projected to do). Therein lies the problem... MS created ridiculous expectations, and upper management in many companies (retailers and OEMs alike) listened and believed, while us grunts in the field couldnt believe anyone would be counting on such a ridiculous expectation. If you had any clue as to the $$$$ some of the retailers expected to make on the Vista launch, you'd be wondering what their management was smoking...

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[cyrtainne]

Well everyone that is forcing themselves to either use, or develop Vista would disagree about that. Wouldn't it be nice to buy a game and have your choice of 3 or 4 operating systems to play that game on instead of just one? If the operating system manufacturers had to build to a blueprint set out by the application software designers instead of the other way around. I guess in a more perfect world.

Re:Well, this is pretty interesting:

[cdrguru]

How about the environment that preceeded Windows? Pretty much this was PC-DOS on IBM compatible hardware, period. But every software package needed to individually support every hardware device that could be installed. This meant very little hardware flexibility.

Same thing with CP/M - no common hardware support. Macintosh sort of provided this, but the amount of hardware available for these computers was very limited in the beginning.

Multiple, disparate operating systems are not going to be supported because there is just too much UI involved. And none of the multiplatform toolkits provide enough performance and/or flexibility to be used. So if you are really lucky there will be two or maybe three platforms supported. And that is just a matter of economics.

quantum OS

[Alien Being]

When MS introduced the world-at-large to the DOS, it was a quantum leap backwards in computing technology. When they introduced the world-at-large to NT, they made a quantum leap forwards, but a quarter century behind.

They sucked, they still suck, and they will continue to suck until the universe implodes or Ballmer and Gates come out of the closet and admit they they are the bastard chimera children of Adolph Hitler, Bealzebob and Dubya.

Re:quantum OS

[edschurr]

What's going to happen to Microsoft in the next 60 years? (I'll be near death if lucky.) Surely they're going to have to change their operation eventually.

Re:quantum OS

[flyingfsck]

Do you have any idea how incredibly small a quantum leap is?

I guess it still applies...

Re:quantum OS

[mrchaotica]

People use "quantum" in this sense to refer to a discrete leap, not a small one. In other words, the parent meant that DOS was an instant [huge] regression from UNIX (or whatever) rather than a continuous decline.

Oh it's driving demand all right

[goombah99]

For Macs and Linux.

On a more sober note. Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP. Up until win2000 windows sucked. With win2000 the interface still sucked. XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.

The point is that every generation of Windows (excluding Bob and ME) has not only an enormous improvement over the last, but almost at the level of an emergency repair that could not be foregone any longer. Thus it drove sales. Any idiot could see why each generation was desirable over the hell they where in.

Maybe with XP the quality finally reach a level where migrating to the next big thing was no longer an emergency. XP had sufficiently good behaviour that the operating system no longer drives sales.

So this time it's going to be the applications that drive sales. You won't upgrade your existing system till the apps start to need whatever Vista has that XP does not do well. Probably this will be some combination of 64bits/video /big memory or....drum roll...DRM. If not then you wait till your harddrive seems puny or you get so rooted that your faced with wiping the disk and reinstalling XP then a chain of service packs. At that point buying a new machine looks attractive.

So Microsoft's big need is the Killer App that only runs well on Vista. You got it?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[shaitand]

'With win2000 the interface still sucked. XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.'

Less sucky in what way? Anyone who knows how uses the classic start menu and control panel. The only thing that really leaves is the theme and anyone who is at all concerned about performance uses the windows classic theme.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

On a more sober note. Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP

Nonsense, It's software piracy. What else could it be that's preventing Vista from selling like it is? Clearly companies like Microsoft need more laws like the DMCA and more DRM in order to prevent this theft that is undoubtedly hurting sales of quality software.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[smash]

On a more sober note. Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP. Up until win2000 windows sucked. With win2000 the interface still sucked. XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.

Err....

WinXP = Win2k + overly large and garish buttons that consume vastly more resources? As to a killer-app for Vista, my current thought on that is "Crysis".

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Lazlo Woodbine]

And USB support. Don't forget how it was in W2000.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[edschurr]

On Windows XP, everything contained within an application window looked better to me. See Qt 4.0 "windowsxp" widgets. I didn't like the titlebar and taskbar however.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[benzapp]

XP made big strides in making the interface less sucky.

I wish I gave a shit enough to bother digging up old slashdot posts.

When XP came out, there must have been 100 posts a day (slashdot was actually popular then) complaining about how stupid and childish the XP interface was. It was relentless. Unlike Vista, XP really DIDN'T offer anything Windows 2000 didn't already have, except for the improved interface and related APIs. Ok, it had system restore too - but that was pretty much it.

Personally, I think the Vista interface is far better than XP, which I hated.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[pchan-]

So Microsoft's big need is the Killer App that only runs well on Vista. You got it?

You mean DirectX 10? Sure, DX10 could run on XP if MS wanted it to, but then nobody would need to buy Vista.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[unother]

I think that the argument could be made that only every other version of Windows became "vital". Windows 3.1 was vital. Windows 95 was liked, but Windows 98 was vital. Windows 2000 was liked, but Windows XP was vital. Windows ME is best forgotten, obviously. As is Bob.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

They are both true.
1) XP is fisher price. It is childish.
2) for consumer market it is much better.
3) even for experts it's easier if dumbed down.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[daniel23]

I'm with you there, but the sorry truth is that w2k is now at the point where applications start to force the switch over to XP - vmware ie. runs so awfully bad on my w2k 2GB dualhead athlon 3800+ desktop I started to run the vms on an acer banyas laptop with just 1 GB amd XP. Games - well, don't really care for them, but they count in that category, too.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

I -so- hate how right you are. I do -not- want Vista, but once a good game comes out that requires (pointlessly) DirectX 10, I won't have much choice left. At this point, I maintain a Windows installation solely for gaming. Even at that, I haven't booted into it for over a week now.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[smash]

If you're really concerned about performance, you go one step further than that, and disable the windows theme service...

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[AaronBrethorst]

Check out this article on Ars for the word from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[cyphercell]

Just asking, how many games do you own that won't work in Vista?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[smash]

Care to enlighten me? I used Win2k between 2000 and 2006 and never had any problems with USB support?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is a testament to the quality of XP.

I can't believe you didn't get modded "funny".

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[ceeam]

My mom's computer is K6@500MHz with whopping 160 megs of PC100 RAM. It does not break a sweat with XP themes at all. I cannot see any difference at all with or without themes. Of course I put Royale there 'cos built-in ones are sucky (aesthetics-wise). And as funny as it is - Office 2k3 also works pretty nice.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Helldesk Hound]

> You mean DirectX 10? Sure, DX10 could run on XP if MS wanted it to, but
> then nobody would need to buy Vista.

DirectX? I've heard of that.

Why would I need to buy DirectX - I've not used anything that needs DirectX for years.

Come to think of it, I see no need to buy Micro$oft Windows Vi$ta - the Windows box I have spends most of it's life turned off - I hardly ever use it any more.

If you want a good reliable system use *nix. Even Apple knows this. This is why RedHat is doing so very nicely.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[ozmanjusri]

Maybe with XP the quality finally reach a level where migrating to the next big thing was no longer an emergency. XP had sufficiently good behaviour that the operating system no longer drives sales.

The current stagnation of OS development is a sign of monopoly, not quality.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Monsterdog]

The Killer App for Vista? Hell, let's get some of the major apps running well on Vista first. In fact, let's get the majority of tools used by people every day to run at all on Vista. I know my writing and music tools will run on XP without too many hitches, but many of those die horribly when it comes to Vista. More than needing a killer app, Vista needs to stop being an app killer.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Suddenly_Dead]

The theme service takes only a few megs of RAM, and a completely negligible or non-existent amount of CPU time; disabling it for performance is akin to buying Monster optical cables for better audio.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[AJWM]

I do -not- want Vista, but once a good game comes out that requires (pointlessly) DirectX 10, I won't have much choice left.

How sad to be so addicted, to be such a slave to the marketplace.

Choice? How about...read a book? watch a video? go for (gasp!) a walk? take up a hobby? Oh, wait, what am I thinking, this is Slashdot. As you were.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

Since I'm a GameTap subscriber... Oh, about 900. -sigh-

Which ones do I have in my house? I dunno... Maybe if someone listed the 5 or so games that DO work on Vista, I could say which ones I don't have.

If I installed Vista, it would be in addition to XP and only for the games that require Vista. Having a third operating system seems asinine, but that's the way it'll have to be.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[faolan_devyn_aodfin]

Same here. I'll switch to WINE once AOE:2, AOE:3, SimCity 4, and Kyodai Mahjongg all work with little fuss and easy, minimal configuration. Right now WINE can't handle any of those. Until then I'll just use XP and hope that SimCity 5 and all the other games in the future remain DX 9 compatible or made with OpenGL support. ALthough we know the next Age Of Empires will be DX 10 because they are made by Microsoft.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

Oddly enough, I -DO- read books. Lots of them. I do watch videos, and take walks in a vain attempt to improve my health. I do have a hobby, it's programming. I also happen to like video games and amazingly enough, it's up to ME whether I buy games or not, and whether I buy the consoles or operating systems needed to run them. If I threw in the towel every time some little thing stood in my way, I'd never had any fun. Shelling out a couple hundred for an OS so that I can continue to play the newest games isn't that much different than buying every console that comes out, which I pretty much do. (No PS3 yet, as they haven't bothered to make a decent game yet. It seems I'm in for a long wait on that one.)

So, I turn that back on you: How sad to be so shallow and assume everyone fits your little profiles.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

List of things for you to do:

1. Realise that Vista RC's have been available to developers for over a year.
   
2. Realise that your "writing and music tools" software vendors have been doing SFA during that time.
   
3. Call them and ask them WhyTF they've done nothing for the past year?
   
4. Learn to put blame where it's due...

-AC

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[myc]

Clear Type (sub pixel rendering) was the killer app that made me switch from 2k to xp. I suppose the display technology also counts as interface design.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[DeadChobi]

You and me both. I would seriously pay $150 for a DirectX 10 implementation for Linux that worked seamlessly. I'm sick of having to boot into Windows when I want to play a game. Most of my games are broken under wine, and I'm not interested in Cedega because of the subscription model that they have.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Venim]

my guess is that he was implying that he did that from the beginning

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[shaitand]

'The theme service takes only a few megs of RAM'

If that were bytes it would be negligible, I need all the megs free that I can get.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Suddenly_Dead]

For the hell of it, I just disabled the service. Gained about 1MB free memory. Started it back up and lost 3.5, though that settled back down to about 1 to 1.5. If 1MB caused me to sweat, I'd be using Linux without X, and would be posting this with Lynx.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[cyphercell]

Ouch! This is why I just don't believe Vista is really going to get adopted all that quickly, what's worse is they broke 32bit apps, which will again need to be rewritten for a 64bit Vista OS. Of course they might make XP available for emulation later on.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[lbanting]

Not surprised at all, need to have a min of 1GB of RAM and 9.5 or so GB just to install on the HDD. Vista seems to be mobidly obese. Its unfortunate that other good OS's are not as well supported by software vendors. I now use Mac OS a lot for web surffing. I am also using ZetaOS for just about everyday use now too (stuff like web, writing letters, etc..) I am using XP only for playing games. I realy do miss the days of when we had the Amiga, Atari ST and even the C64. Sofware vendors used to support many computer Platforms and OS's, wish they still did.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[shaitand]

'Gained about 1MB free memory.'

Thats 1MB of memory you were giving up for absolutely nothing. Using the classic desktop and turning off all the eye candy makes the desktop much more responsive.

There are dozens of things that serve no worthwhile purpose in windows you can turn off to gain 1-5mb of ram. They add up.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Suddenly_Dead]

It does not make the desktop more responsive. Yes, there are many things you can turn off, and that's decent point. I'm singling out the singling out of the theme service though. There is zero performance difference on my 3 year old computer with the service off. Zero. Zip. It doesn't matter if I'm running resource intensive tasks or not, there's no difference. Alt-tabbing, window moving, start menu opening, menu opening, it's all equally as fast.

I'm willing to sacrifice this meg for a bit of aesthetic happiness (obviously not using the default Fisher Price theme).

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

more like from the horses arse. :)

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[smash]

$5/month is too much for you? Seriously...

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[smash]

Later Nvidia detonator drivers do similar stuff in XP. The font rendering seemed much improved when i switched back to 2k from XP anyway...

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[AaronBrethorst]

Hah! If only you knew Phil (the guy from the article) :) He would actually find that comment kind of amusing.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[SinclAirV2]

i think microsoft needs to design what they sell not just sell what they design. vista just isn't worth it. aestheically much nicer than xp other than that no major improvements to be noted from my testing. and ofcourse ms always has to go over the top with dumb ease of use features like the ever annoying security center (i just disable in msconfig services) and windows media player the most unstable annoying media center i have ever seen. where'e is the geeks incentive to bother to download this freely let alone buy this crap? there is none for me. it's a sad thing to me that the giant corporations of america from hollywood down to silicon valley up to seattle just want something to sell and no longer care what that is. i would never sell or make 99% of the things that are mainstream and popular today. it could all be done so much better if only they still cared...

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

Anyone who knows how uses the classic start menu and control panel.

I don't. Why would I ? The "new" Start Menu is superior in basically every measurable way.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Bert64]

I found the constant hassle of having to have the latest version of windows, video drivers, sufficient hd space for bloat, having to keep the hardware up to date and conversely having to tweak settings to get optimal performance all too much...
I game exclusively on consoles now, although someone should make a keyboard and mouse for consoles so you can play FPS games properly...
The side effect of this, is that i no longer have any need for windows at all.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

You mean DirectX 10? Sure, DX10 could run on XP if MS wanted it to, but then nobody would need to buy Vista.

Sure, just like all the improvements in Linux 2.6 could have been in 2.2 "if Linus wanted to", or all the stuff in Leopard could have been in OS X 10.0, "if Apple wanted to".

What's your point ?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

I -so- hate how right you are. I do -not- want Vista, but once a good game comes out that requires (pointlessly) DirectX 10, I won't have much choice left.

I think you need to consult a dictionary.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

This is why I just don't believe Vista is really going to get adopted all that quickly, what's worse is they broke 32bit apps, which will again need to be rewritten for a 64bit Vista OS.

WTF are you talking about ? Vista doesn't "break 32 bit apps".

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[GreatBunzinni]

That's bullshit. In that article Phil Taylor states that the reason that DirectX 10 would not be made available to Windows XP and was exclusive to Vista was that XP was released on 2001 and the design of DirectX 10 was only solidified on late 2003. That is a very retarded statement to make.

According to the same article, Windows Vista, as we know it, was rebuilt from the ground up in 2004. That means that if DirectX 10 needed any special functionality to work then the Vista people had to rewrite Vista from the ground up with that in mind, which doesn't say much on it's own. On the other hand, XP's service pack 2 was released in 2004, which means that if XP really needed any special features to handle DirectX 10 that, since DirectX is being worked on from the time XP was first launched and the supposed target platform for which DirectX was built was scrapped, that there was absolutely no reason for Microsoft to not support DirectX on XP.

So, as it is easy to see, the only reason that DirectX is not supported in Windows XP is simply due to Microsoft's decision of not doing it. Microsoft does not want to support DirectX 10 on other OS besides Vista. Period. For crying out loud, it's a fucking API. A fucking interface to handle hardware. Who in their right mind claims that certain pieces of hardware can only work on Windows Vista and not on Windows XP?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

Perhaps you should have done the same, first.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/require
"3. to ask for authoritatively or imperatively; demand."

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

Actually, for a 'seamless' dx10 implementation that's open source and works on Linux, I'd be willing to pay a 1-time fee of quite a bit more than that. But I think it would be better to convince game developers that developing for OpenGL is better. I think the problem is that it's not currently enough better/more-profitable to make them want to learn to do it cross-platform.

I think the day is approaching. Cross-platform libraries like Ogre3D/OIS/OpenAL/Newton/etc are quickly approaching the point where they would be considerably cheaper to use, and just about as powerful as the mega-bucks versions.

I subscribed to Cedega for a few months, because I heard how good it was. But then while I was on it, I kept hearing how Wine was just about as good in most ways, and better in others, apparently since Cedega's greed locked them out of Wine updates, but forced them to contribute back. Since Cedega was iffy anyhow, and only played 1 game that I liked, and played it very poorly, I dropped my subscription. Even worse was the changelogs... Wine seems to fix a LOT more each month than Cedega does. Very sad.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[MaxVT]

If you think that the interface is the reason why XP is so successful, you must be coming from the Mac world, as you are totally and completely wrong :)

Windows 2000, and XP after it, made a quantum leap towards relative stability and reliability of the Windows platform. Most peripherals started to work properly from the first try as driver model and manufacturers' experience improved, and BSOD's became a thing of the past -- I remember getting at least one BSOD daily in '98 days, but I don't remember my XP system hanging up or BSODing for at least a year now.

Why would I want to upgrade with all the Vista horror stories?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Antique Geekmeister]

XP's underlying NT kernel and merging of the Windows 9x interfaces made it useful. Vista's killer apps are better security (which admittedly needed a new OS release), DRM (which is not the same thing as security, but tends to be linked), and their XML based file system "WinFS" which seems to have been appropriapriately discarded.

There is no "killer app" that demands Vista. Expect XP to last as long as or longer than Windows 98 and Windows 2000.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, it's really not. It's quite bad for your wrists.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

Perhaps you should have done the same, first.

Perhaps you can explain how games will "require (pointlessly)" DirectX 10 ? Are you trying to argue game developers will spend significant amounts of time and money writing games to use DirectX 10 for no reason ?

You can follow up by elaborating on how you will have no "choice" but to purchase said games. Does it involve the software developers coming over to your house with bright lights and thumbscrews ?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Aladrin]

Because the same games would have run just fine on DX9 or OpenGL, they simply got paid money by MS (or are owned by MS) to require DX10 instead. It is a demand, not a necessity.

As for 'no choice' but to purchase the games... I never said that. My 'no choice' was to purchase Vista, instead, to get DX10 to PLAY the games I know I'll purchase.

Car analogy time: Let's say you REALLY like cars. But all the new cars have some newfangled feature that requires you to re-take the driver's license test to prove you can drive them safely before buying the new car. You could continue to use the old cars, or use any other workaround you want, like buses, bikes, and walking. Or you could take the test and be back to being able to drive the newest, neatest cars. You'd simply take the test, no matter how annoying or expensive it was, because you -really- like cars.

Games are the same way. Gamers buy the newest consoles and OS's needed to play their games. It's that simple.

Most people have some pointless hobby that relaxes them. Camping, hiking, racing, gaming, sports... Everyone's different, but there's usually something that has no value other than entertainment. If you can manage a life that's got no frills and only has purposeful activities, congratulations. You're one in a million, and I salute you. Take the time to be humble and don't rub salt in the wounds of lesser mortals. If you aren't, and you do in fact have a purposeless activity, everyone else thinks it's stupid! Don't bother telling everyone else that you think theirs is stupid.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[rtb61]

I think you are just a bit confused, all think improvements from the 2.6 kernel are available for the 2.2 kernel, when upgrade the 2.2 kernel it becomes the 2.6 kernel. You can do it on line for free.

There is no upgrade price, there is no (FU)DRM, there is no compulsory WGA, there is no re-confirming permissions to use the software upon a monthly basis. There is no choice with M$ windows and from M$ point of view, if you bought XP tomorrow then you have already used up years of support and service, and you, well really they, have your moneys worth.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[the_womble]

To summarise your argument, MS's big mistake was making Windows suck less. As long as it was really crap, people kept buying new versions in the hope of improvement. Once it got acceptably good, then people were happy and stuck with what they had.

Scarily plausible. The same does not seem to apply to Office though: people keep buying new versions of office just to write letters with.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[NickFortune]

The "new" Start Menu is superior in basically every measurable way.

Right. So that'd be a total of zero ways in which the "new" start menu is superior.

Pretty much the conclusion I'd already arrived at, really. Unless you'd like to list your metrics, and explain how to measure them.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[PingSpike]

What about it? I used 2K up until last year, when I couldn't find the disk. I never had any problems with USB devices.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[goombah99]

I'd say that was a fair if hilarious summary. But the reason people buy new Offices is NOT to _write_ letters. It's to _read_ letters. Every time a new office comes out, eventually I start getting letters my old copy can't read. I have to respond so I buy office++.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I have 2G of ram. I'm not going to lose sleep over 1M here and there.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[shaitand]

'XP's underlying NT kernel and merging of the Windows 9x interfaces made it useful.'

Actually Win2000 did that. XP gave the interface a makeover that nobody really liked. Everyone I know of avoided XP (just like they are avoiding Vista) but it spread anyway since it comes on computers and 2000 now receives a reduced level of support.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[shaitand]

'I have 2G of ram. I'm not going to lose sleep over 1M here and there.'

That's enough to run Vista if you don't need to do anything fancy.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[paganizer]

And there is the ONE arguement against the continued use of Win2k that is valid. When Microsoft decided not to release the 64-bit patch for win2k except on very high end database servers, they did the one thing that would actually hurt the OS, and push people into the Evil which is XP.

As VMware has a 64-bit version, it would make sense that it would run better in a 64-bit enabled OS. I, and others, can write patches to get rid of the name checking artificial limitations, like with Age of Empires 3, but I'm just not up to writing a 64-bit patch.

If there are any MicroSofties out there with a soul, PLEASE release the 64-bit patch for win2k? just sneak it into your lunchbox one day.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[MioTheGreat]

WinFS was not a file system. It was an insanely complicated, slow, and bloaty database that was used for indexing purposes in early betas. NTFS was always the file system with WinFS.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[speculatrix]

100% agree... directx was upgraded on win2k as part of optional extras. next, MS will be saying that a future release of MediaPlayer (e.g. v12) can't work on XP, so you'll have to upgrade to Vista.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[cyphercell]

There is a ton of software that isn't supported on Vista and quite a bit that simply doesn't work. These are 32 bit apps that are broken, maybe the API wasn't destroyed, but there are a lot of applications that do not run on Vista or they run with after a certain amount of ritual Vista installation. Many people that have purchased Vista are disappointed because literally thousands of dollars of software that they own do not work with Vista. The funny thing is that once these apps can finally run on Vista people will then again need to upgrade if they need 64 bit apps. I don't know how much of this software needs to be rewritten or how much will be installable after service packs but right now it seems like a 32 bit upgrade cycle before people even start making the move to 64 bit apps. I might be completely wrong but drivers need to be rewritten for Vista 32 and they will again need to be rewritten for Vista 64, it seems like much of the software is the same, this is painful for the entire industry.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I run XP on this box - it's enough for playing eve or doing java development without ever swapping. Who wants Vista?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Orange Crush]

Because the same games would have run just fine on DX9 or OpenGL,

Sure. On a PC. However, DX10 gives developers a much easier path for porting games between the xbox360 and Vista PCs. It's also a bit of a litmus test--a pre-Vista PC is probably a pre-2007 PC, which probably isn't powerful enough to suitably run games presently in development (most PCs are *not* gaming rigs).

There are more than 10 million 360s out there. Even if a studio decides to target the PC only, they'd be foolish to use APIs that will make it more difficult to port to that potential audience should the game become popular. Despite what might happen with the Wii and PS3, next year's games are being developed *now.* The studios have to target the market they have, and right now, DX10 makes the most sense.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[mrchaotica]

I subscribed to Cedega for a few months, because I heard how good it was. But then while I was on it, I kept hearing how Wine was just about as good in most ways, and better in others, apparently since Cedega's greed locked them out of Wine updates, but forced them to contribute back. Since Cedega was iffy anyhow, and only played 1 game that I liked, and played it very poorly, I dropped my subscription. Even worse was the changelogs... Wine seems to fix a LOT more each month than Cedega does. Very sad.

Personally, I'd like to see a version of Crossover with a focus on gaming. Codeweavers seems to be much better than Transgaming in terms of cooperating with the WINE developers.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

I think you are just a bit confused, all think improvements from the 2.6 kernel are available for the 2.2 kernel, when upgrade the 2.2 kernel it becomes the 2.6 kernel. You can do it on line for free.

Except the 2.6 kernel also brings along with it verious other upgrades that need to be done - glibc, etc - which may break existing applications, requiring them to also be upgraded, and so on, and so forth.

The situations is exactly the same. Marginally cheaper, perhaps, but in the long run the up-front cost of most software is a pittance.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

Right. So that'd be a total of zero ways in which the "new" start menu is superior.

I'll turn it about: how is the new Start Menu _worse_ ?

Pretty much the conclusion I'd already arrived at, really. Unless you'd like to list your metrics, and explain how to measure them.

Firstly, the new Start Menu delivers all the functionality of the old Start Menu, in essentially the same format - so the *worst case* is that they're the same.

Secondly, the new functionality it offers is the more-recently-used program list, more items that can be placed directly on it (My Computer, etc) and accessibility to them is improved (eg: My Documents and Recent Documents are separate items on the top level). This makes accessing programs you use (relatively) frequently quicker (via the MRU list) and also makes accessing things like My Documents and quicker.

The MRU-list, in particular, is extremely helpful once you learn to use it.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[AJWM]

You were the one claiming not to have a choice. So you were lying about that, eh?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[revengebomber]

Who in their right mind claims that certain pieces of hardware can only work on Windows Vista and not on Windows XP?

The same people who throw chairs across the room and dance around like idiots on stage.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[rtb61]

There is nothing the same about it at all. Have you even done, for example an Ubuntu update. all the required files are updated, free of charge, the machine does not even try to force you into a reboot, it politely waits until you have finished and reboot in your own time prior to actually updating the files. It even offers the original kernel at boot time as an option.

No paying three times as much for the software as you originally paid, and if does break your software or hardware, the original is right there and ready to use and you can wait until such time as you choose to make the change. No WGA nonsense, no (FU)DRM, no activation M$=B$, and absolutely no reducing the functionality of the hardware and software you have paid for, you own your PC not M$.

I have an old Suse 7.2 that I am still running and it is fine, when the mood strikes, I might update it, or if I choose (emphasis on I choose) swap to an alternate distribution, perhaps Xubuntu as it is an older machine (trying doing that in the, you have no choice, windows environment).

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[NickFortune]

I'll turn it about: how is the new Start Menu _worse_ ?

:D I never said it was worse. Personally, I don't like it at all, but that's not the same thing as worse.

What I was really getting at was the word "measurable" which I took to suggest that there was some objective basis for your preference, rather than personal like and dislike. I think I was hoping that you did have some actual measurements that could be applied. Studying software metrics can do this to a chap, I'm afraid.

Now personally, I find the more-recently-used program feature a constant and ongoing irritation; I don't know what's supposed to be so problematic about editing your menu tree to reflect your normal usage, but with these stupid adaptive menus, nothing is ever where I expect to find it. Similarly, I have my own ideas about where to keep my various documents, and I do most of my document processing under Linux anyway. And while the old menu is still broken with this most-recent-program business, at least the overall layout is more or less as I expect and I don't have all the unnecessary and distracting clutter of the new thing.

So from my viewpoint, the old menu is the clear winner. The thing is though, it's just personal preference. Measurement doesn't enter into it.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Vista, as we know it, was rebuilt from the ground up in 2004.

Note to Microsoft Marketing.... The large amount of dirt on the 10th floor does not make it "the ground".

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

What I was really getting at was the word "measurable" which I took to suggest that there was some objective basis for your preference, rather than personal like and dislike. I think I was hoping that you did have some actual measurements that could be applied. Studying software metrics can do this to a chap, I'm afraid.

And I do. Original functionality remains unchanged. New functionality reduces access times for common tasks (eg: getting to the contents of My Documents).

Ie: your metric is how long it takes to do stuff and the new Start Menu is faster - or, at worst, no slower.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

Because the same games would have run just fine on DX9 or OpenGL, they simply got paid money by MS (or are owned by MS) to require DX10 instead. It is a demand, not a necessity.

Evidence, apart from the black helicopters circling your house ?

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[drsmithy]

There is nothing the same about it at all. Have you even done, for example an Ubuntu update. all the required files are updated, free of charge, the machine does not even try to force you into a reboot, it politely waits until you have finished and reboot in your own time prior to actually updating the files. It even offers the original kernel at boot time as an option.

Firstly, Ubuntu hasn't been around long enough to suffer through a major kernel update, so using it as an example in this context is simply wrong. Secondly, even Ubuntu has had a large number of upgrade headaches and horror stories in its short life.

I've been managed Linux systems since the early 2.0.x kernels, and I can assure you that your scenario is grossly simplified, even for a naive idealist. A major Linux upgrade similar to going from Windows XP to Vista is a significant undertaking and breaks a lot of software unless it is also upgraded at the same time.

No paying three times as much for the software as you originally paid, and if does break your software or hardware, the original is right there and ready to use and you can wait until such time as you choose to make the change.

Even more evidence you've never had to performance a major upgrade on a Linux system.

No WGA nonsense, no (FU)DRM, no activation M$=B$, and absolutely no reducing the functionality of the hardware and software you have paid for, you own your PC not M$.

Please explain how Vista "reduces the functionality of the hardware and software you have paid for".

I have an old Suse 7.2 that I am still running and it is fine, when the mood strikes, I might update it, [...]

Don't forget to try and keep all those old applications running and *only* upgrade the kernel and core system libraries, so you're doing something close to an apples to apples comparison. Heck, try upgrading just the kernel on its own and none of the dependencies - should be good for a laugh.

[...] or if I choose (emphasis on I choose) swap to an alternate distribution, perhaps Xubuntu as it is an older machine (trying doing that in the, you have no choice, windows environment).

Changing distributions is the equivalent of changing from Windows to OS X, or Windows to Linux. Nothing in Windows stops you doing either of those, nor does anything in Windows "force" you to upgrade to a newer version of Windows.

Re:Oh it's driving demand all right

[NickFortune]

your metric is how long it takes to do stuff

As metrics go, that's not a particularly useful one. Millimetres are a useful metric, since if I measure something and if you measure the same thing we, should get the same result. Seconds are a useful metric, KLOC (thousands of lines of code) is a useful metric.

And while you could certainly measure the time it takes you to perform two tasks using both old and new menus, it's not really reproducible since I'm likely to get a different value from the one you get. You could take a sample population and average the times it took for each of them in both cases, and if this is what you have done, then I will admit to being impressed, albeit with certain reservations.

But if, as I suspect, all we're doing is talking about our subjective impression of the time taken in using these menus, then as a metric it's pretty much useless for the simple reason that we do, in fact, get different results: I find the old style menu faster and easier to use.

There are now alternatives

[gilesjuk]

XP is still a lot more stable than Win9x ever was. Vista has clear disadvantages (over zealous DRM).

The threats from Apple and Linux weren't really there when XP was released. Microsoft has to learn to deal with the fact that they have to compete and can't release any old rubbish.

Re:There are now alternatives

[pogson]

"Microsoft has to learn to deal with the fact that they have to compete and can't release any old rubbish."

A flat quarter with a new product that cost billions to develop should do it...

Not that I think MSFT will learn to be more competitive, and they have burned too many customers, offended too many governments, produced too much schlock, told too many lies and cost the world economy too much to be welcome in the market place.

Re:There are now alternatives

[malevolentjelly]

DRM isn't an issue for corporate buyers. It's only an issue for linux and apple fanboys.

Re:There are now alternatives

[Andrei D]

Can you please clarify me on this subject? How Vista's DRM affects you if you don't have media "protected" by drm ? What happens to my mp3s and divx files which are unencumbered with DRM? How Vista handles this type of content?

Gideon Bibles in hotel rooms

[sjwest]

Most Vista sales are bundled, while it its possible to remove it is a 'forced' sale - if you are happy with xp, why would you want to use vista on a new machine.

People did the 95->98->windows 2000->windows xp thing so is the penny dropping out there and what they have is good enough ?

If you run games use probably have a wii/ps3/xbox - next gen dvd is still up in the air. I dont see that uber game you need vista for, and the dvd format winner is going to mean more upgrading.

Its a hard sale - while i know theres a gideon bible in the hotel room dont expect me to use it.

Well, duh.

[The Fanta Menace]

Most people buy computers for the applications they can run on them, not because of the new shiny user interface provided by the operating system.

Re:Well, duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cough ::Halo 2:: cough cough

Re:Well, duh.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

"Most people buy computers for the applications they can run on them"

God i hope your a linux zealout, because so few linux zealots actually get this.

Re:Well, duh.

[cranos]

Well given the amount of apps that don't yet run on Vista, this could be a problem.

Re:Well, duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Set of applications that most people want to run {Web, E-Mail, IM, Video, Audio, Office}

Yes, I understand that not everyone is a programmer so the ease-of-programming in *nix (compared to Windows) doesn't appeal to them. But not everyone is a graphic designer, Engineer (CAD), accountant, or gamer either.

Linux does everything _most_ people need from a computer. Plus, it doesn't randomly break down on them either (it may be a bitch to setup, but once it's working and configured, it's golden) due to (crap|spy|mal)ware being piled onto it.

Re:Well, duh.

[Ash-Fox]

(it may be a bitch to setup, but once it's working and configured, it's golden)

Same can be said about Windows.

I think a better comparison might be:

Preinstalled Windows (like from Dell) VS preinstalled Linux (like from System76).

Re:Well, duh.

[mrchaotica]

Yes, I understand that not everyone is a programmer so the ease-of-programming in *nix (compared to Windows) doesn't appeal to them. But not everyone is a graphic designer, Engineer (CAD), accountant, or gamer either.

As an engineer, I would love it if AutoCAD ran in Linux (or better yet, if a cross-platform app overtook AutCAD's dominance in civil engineering).

hmmm

[smash]

As someone who's currently got a dodgy copy of Vista running at home (30 day grace period... yeah, yeah, i'm going to buy it when i get home this week), i can see why it's not *currently* selling well for most people (this will change of course when you can no longer buy XP easily).

No, it's nothing to do with the DRM, which the average user is totally oblivious to.

It's the fact that there is currently no compelling reason to upgrade, from a "general use" perspective. Really - other than flip3d (and very few "normal users" i know even use alt-tab) and the new start menu, it's the same old shit, only with more irritating user access control. The fact that for most people's current PCs, performance will be significantly worse, and driver support just isn't there yet doesn't help.

As an aside - a major issue at the moment is the changes to DirectSound. Unless you've got an X-fi soundblaster and run creative's "Alchemy" software which translates Directsound into OpenAL, you're not going to get any EAX support in any games, and the sound support you do get is often scratchy and clicky (eg, neverwinter nights 2)

That said, I'm buying Vista - which is a drastic change in my attitude from 3 months ago. Why? Becuase Win2k is no longer supported, XP *really* is a steaming pile of shit, and Linux just isn't there yet for me to run exclusively (though i've been a user since 1996). I spend all day at work doing admin stuff - on my home pc all i want to do is run some games (and Falcon4: Allied Force, for example, will not run under Cedega), browse the net and media related stuff. From my testing this week, Vista is "good enough" for the tasks I ask of it (nwn2 had minor issues, F4:AF runs fine), and it's a currently supported product.

Also, it's inevitable that I'll have to support it at work sooner or later, so I may as well get a head start on the issues it has.

Re:hmmm

[Shadyman]

"... other than flip3d... and the new start menu, it's the same old shit, only with more irritating user access control." So since "XP *really* is a steaming pile of shit", you're upgrading to Vista, which is "the same old shit".

I don't get it.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

XP *really* is a steaming pile of shit,

Why do you say that? XP *really* is Windows 2000. You can turn off the goofy Fisher-Price UI and it looks and works just like Win2K. In other words, fine.

I still run Win2K because I object to XP's product activation, but geez, as an OS it's just fine.

Re:hmmm

[smash]

Well, to clarify. New apps will eventually require vista. DirectX10 is vista only. I use my PC for games. DirectX10 games will require vista.

What I'm saying is that unless you have a specific reason for upgrading, there's little incentive. My "specific reasons" are DirectX10, and because I'd like to know the issues I'm dealing with before I have to fix them in the field...

Re:hmmm

[smash]

Check the number of vulnerabilities that affected XP and compare to Win2k. Compare RAM usage to Win2k. Turn off the fisher price UI, and you have Win2k + insecurity + bloat + product activation. How is that an "upgrade" again?

That's why i think it's a steaming pile of shit - it was a definite step backwards for my purposes :)

Vista on the other hand, at least brings a few things to the table - UI that is much more capable (sure, at the moment the use of 3d is pretty lame, but the framework is there), new (albeit flawed) security model, etc.

I'm not saying it's perfect by any stretch, but there is at least some benefit for me in it.

Re:hmmm

[MMC Monster]

I don't get it either. WinXP running in classic mode with all the effects turned off and all the latest security packs and firefox as the default browser is actually a fairly usable system. (Though I miss the magnetic way windows hit the sides of the screen in gnome.)

Creating a slipstream installation disk of WinXP with the service packs is documented on a number of websites and makes installation fairly easy as well.

WinXP may have it's faults, but it is certainly a usable system and can be solid so long as the user takes care when browsing the internet (and using a secure browser as well, of course).

Re:hmmm

[psychokitten]

As an aside - a major issue at the moment is the changes to DirectSound. Unless you've got an X-fi soundblaster and run creative's "Alchemy" software which translates Directsound into OpenAL, you're not going to get any EAX support in any games, and the sound support you do get is often scratchy and clicky (eg, neverwinter nights 2)

Even though I'm still running Ultimate on my notebook - this is THE big killer for me, and the reason that Vista will never see my desktop at all. The removal of hardware access to DirectSound and the changes made to the audio APIs in general, while nice for general purpose use (I absolutely love having a seperate volume slider for each app running,) is a -huge- step backwards for gaming.

On the bright side though, this might help drive OpenAL even more to the forefront in Windows gaming - since OpenAL games, from what I understand (I haven't done too much testing yet,) still sound just fine, with all effects and such.

Re:hmmm

[jez9999]

(this will change of course when you can no longer buy XP easily)

I wasn't aware that Messrs. eMule and devils0wn had any short-term XP retirement plans.

Re:hmmm

[aaronl]

If nobody migrates to Vista, then games won't require DirectX10. This is a win for everyone, except Microsoft. It might even end up a win for them, if it gets the MS directors to fire Steve Ballmer.

Again, your specific reasons for migrating are: "an API that nobody is using" and "an OS that nobody is using". Those *are* specific reasons, but they're not very good ones.

Re:hmmm

[aaronl]

If you turn off all of the services that MS added in XP, you have Windows 2000 with a few minor modifications. There are two things that I noticeably like about XP over 2000. The power management support is much nicer, and the system boots much more quickly.

XP has two service packs, and a bunch of hotfixes. 2000 has four and a half service packs, and a bunch of hotfixes, and isn't being actively supported. Most of the XP hotfixes are for IE, and you can bet they apply to 98/ME/2000 as well. There have been a bunch of fixes of UPnP, which you should disable anyway. There have bee numerous fixes for WMP, whose current version is arbitrarily unavailable on 2000, and for .NET, which doesn't come by default.

IOW, once you turn off the bloat and things that are insecure, you have Win2000, but with better power management and a faster boot process. Except you'd be getting fixes and updates.

Product activation is easily "fixed", and that's why MS completely screws the customer with the even more draconian system in Vista.

Vista, on the other hand, gets you a ton of bugs, a lot of broken software, a lot of broken hardware, a slower system that you can't "fix" by turning it off, a horrid blurry eye-straining UI, and a broken new security model. You also get the huge pile of security issues that we don't know about, since they rewrote so many random systems and they haven't been proven yet.

Also, you mention "Win2k + insecurity + bloat + product activation." Vista is, in fact, the same thing, and worse. You still have the core of the NT kernel, and it works mostly the same as on Win2k. Then you add all the insecurity of all the new code and existing problems, all of the bloat from the "we did it this way because it's like the standard, but *proprietary*"-syndrome and the rush to fill my screen with useless garbage. You get the treble increased memory requirements, and that's over XP. You also get even worse product activation and user intrusive DRM. So, you get all of the things you hate about XP, but they are more prolific. By your own logic, that makes Vista a *larger* step backwards than XP.

There would be some benefit for you in switching to Solaris, too, but there would also be a lot of disadvantages. If you're going to comment on it, at least tell the truth: you're only switching to Vista because you feel like it.

Re:hmmm

[aaronl]

OpenAL games all fine. OpenAL doesn't use DirectSound3D to do audio transformation.

What we would be really lucky with is if the game manufacturers realize that you can't trust MS API's to continue to exist and function. Maybe the next thing they'll drop or change will be something in DirectPlay, or DirectInput. The more that happens, the more likely we end up with a cross-platform replacement. Then all of the Mac and Linux and whatever users get to play their games, without a Windows license being involved.

Re:hmmm

[smash]

Click. There ya go.

Difference between moving from 2k to XP and from 2k/XP to vista is huge, for those reasons.

Re:hmmm

[smash]

Crysis is for DirectX 10. By getting my head around vista NOW i'll be ahead of the masses when people start using it.

If you think that in 12 months time there will still be nobody using vista, you're deluded. I already know how to, and do make use of Linux/FreeBSD, so it's not like i'm going to be unprepared for them taking hold either. It's called keeping your (employment) options open.

What Linux should do

[goombah99]

If the above theory is right-- with vista people are going to hold onto their XP boxes longer-- then what's going to happen is that down the road a bit there's going to be a lot of boxes out there that are just too slow to be worth upgrading. People will buy new boxes.

So what do they do with their old ones? Linux should aim to get people to install linux on these.

There's three reasons I can see to do this:.

One is if there were some reason people needed a server in their homes. Probably not a huge market but one that linux can serve if there was a really nice user friendly server version, which there isn't right now. Server editions are tuned for the expert linux users. What could this application be. Just guessing but suppose everyone had an Xbox 360 in each room, and they needed a common place to put all the music and videos?

Two is what I did, namely put on DSL linux onto my ancient win98 computer. Man what a difference!!! it was liek having a new computer. It suddenly booted in less than 30 seconds. Apps opened instantly. The interface was clean and crisp. Even networking functioned better. It became a very servicable laptop and is still in use when my wife needs something to take notes at a meeting. So there needs to be a version of linux (and as important: the applications) that is so lightweight it makes old hardware feel sprightly again. However the major distros and major apps are all going the opposite direction. Heavy feature laden and resource hungry. DSL would be good but it's not really a comsumer distro. We need a stripped consumer friendly distro.

Third is as a game machine for the little kids. But there's no software.

I think option 1 or 2 could be a killer app for linux in the home: All these computers that will be retiring.

Re:What Linux should do

[gripen40k]

I totally agree that's what we need in a Linux, and for me it would be the server one. I have a crumby computer that could really use the PC-to-server treatment. I dunno, Ubunto maybe, but I'm still a little concerned that if something goes wrong I'll have to go on IRC or something equally unappealing just to get it fixed, as opposed to WinXP where I just 'know' how to fix it.

I guess we can all dream 'eh?

Re:What Linux should do

[Anonymous Coward]

One is if there were some reason people needed a server in their homes. Probably not a huge market but one that linux can serve if there was a really nice user friendly server version, which there isn't right now. Server editions are tuned for the expert linux users. What could this application be. Just guessing but suppose everyone had an Xbox 360 in each room, and they needed a common place to put all the music and videos?

There's already a server designed exactly for these purposes (and I have to say, it's pretty sweet -- for home users to administer, even in beta, it is LIGHT YEARS ahead of any/every *nix o/s in existence.
Windows Home Server

-AC

Re:What Linux should do

[gallwapa]

Have you not heard of SLES?

Re:What Linux should do

[Anonymous Coward]

What is SLES

Re:What Linux should do

[lpcustom]

I'm still a little concerned that if something goes wrong I'll have to go on IRC or something equally unappealing just to get it fixed, as opposed to WinXP where I just 'know' how to fix it.

If everyone is so afraid to READ these days, why are posts so high on sites like Slashdot? Are you using the Opera text-to-speech engine to read Slashdot? All sarcasm aside... Googling any Linux prob you may have as a beginner will yield an answer 99% of the time, and anyone who feels the need to reply to me saying that they've tried this method and spent 2-5 hours trying to find an answer should really devote 2-5 hours learning how to use a search engine.
If MS would trim some of the fat(like the GUI) off it's OS it could have a much better server edition. Put a windows server edition on that old PC and see if it's very useful. You can get a lot more power from those older PCs with a slimmed down server install of Linux or one of the BSDs. Of course, this may require you to learn something. Heaven forbid anyone try to learn something in this day and age. That would be so unamerican.

Re:What Linux should do

[Asztal_]

I'm afraid we'll never know... If only there was some sort of website where you could enter a word or acronym and find out what it means ;-(

Re:What Linux should do

[gripen40k]

Yeah, totally taken out of context. It's not that I can't search for answers to a problem, it's that I don't want to learn something for absolutely no reason. I know how to fix Windows, I don't know how to fix Linux. I'm sorry, that's all I really have to say to someone like you, your post was just so... stereotypically Linux user. If you want to know why I think that, ask, but otherwise, try not to be so sarcastic next time you reply.

Re:What Linux should do

[gripen40k]

Now that's good sarcasm!

Re:What Linux should do

[Anonymous Coward]

i put [ sles linux ] in google and up popped many references to

          SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

may not be what he meant,... but

Re:What Linux should do

[Fyzzler]

I highly recommend SME Server at http://www.smeserver.org/ as a trivially easy to use server version of Linux. You can install it in 15-20 minutes and then configure it using a nice web interface in another 15 minutes.

The web management is very nice and it will even act as an NT Primary domain controller for single sign on to a domain out of the box, with Samba shares, ftp, and email. It can act as your firewall/gateway or as just a stand alone server. It is based on CentOS 4.4 and it is great for home or small business servers with WindowsXP clients.

Re:What Linux should do

[zmollusc]

I find freenas to work for me. It even gets round the pesky BIOS hard disk size limitations on my clunky old 800MHz box.

Re:What Linux should do

[gripen40k]

Thanks for this! I checked it out, looks pretty good, particularly the web interface; means I don't have to use another keyboard/mouse/monitor. The other person who posted to my topic talked about freeNAS, which also looks interesting. I'll definitely check this out.

Re:What Linux should do

[gripen40k]

Thanks for the info, freeNAS looks pretty cool. I'm probably going to test it out, see how it works and all that and see if it's right for my home network.

Vista has found to be lacking

[JensenDied]

When I first heard about Vista/Longhorn it seemed like it would be good. Usable userlevel accounts, video driver handling that wouldn't BSOD the whole system if they faulted. Since then, its just become the reason I format my systems and re-install from scratch to avoid the bloat ware. Its backwards compat leaves something to be desired, IE7 doesn't even show to be much better than 6, breaking things like SSL (at least at first) blackboard which is essential to some classes at many Universities is unacceptable for students. From when I was using the beta's the UI has become so overly bloated, not that it needs to be simplified like gnome to nothingness, it needed a lot of cleaning up and organization. I'm sure that there is some use for the widgets, I couldn't find any. Hell I couldn't even auth into the schools network so that I could even attempt to make use of the system, might have been fixed now.

for me, using Ubuntu with good success

[Anonymous Coward]

I will with-hold my vitriole concerning those lazy schemers at Microsoft. I am glad to report
that this junkpile is starting to work. I am using Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T30. Streaming radio,
good wireless, good DVD playback. I'm just a schmoe, a nobody. What more can I ask for? It's great.
I am really happy with Ubuntu.

PS DIE MICROSOFT! DIE!!!!

Looking Forward To

[NickisGod.com]

I for one look forward to upgrading my customers to Vista. Vista Business in particular for one reason, Shadow Copy.

I appreciate Shadow Copy Service on my server. I think it's going to be a great feature for small businesses who can't spring for a server with this feature.

Also, the new backup application actually copies files in a way you can read without using the restore option. Kind of like Robocopy with a gui.

Finally a built in calendar if you're not using Outlook or ACT!.

Egad, I sound like a fan boy. My next machine will be a quad core with SATA Raid 0 probably running Ultimate. I have to keep using it for my business, but it should run Ubuntu nicely in VMWare on that second monitor I want to get, so I'm a little bit slashdot geek.

-Nick.

Re:Looking Forward To

[smash]

Tip: you do not want RAID0 for business use. If you want more speed, buy more ram and make use of disk cache. If that's not an option, buy quicker disks.

Trust me, eventually you'll have a disk failure on your RAID0 array, and you'll be facing downtime, usually when it's most inconvenient :)

Unless you're using the PC for some very specific tasks, there's no need for RAID0.

At the very minimum, make your system/boot partition RAID1 (mirror) so you can at least boot to be able to restore files to another disk if you get errors in one of the disks :) It's a lot more convenient to be able to pop in a new disk, boot up as normal from your RAID1 partition and restore your RAID0 partition than reinstall from scratch :)

Re:Looking Forward To

[NickisGod.com]

Appreciate the note, but I am really not afraid of a system failure. Critical data is on the server, email is in Exchange Store and I have my laptop as backup. I want an uber machine damnit.

Re:Looking Forward To

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok your critical stuff is on the Server.
Then with todays huge HDD's (500Gb +) pray tell us total ignoramuses just why you want to run Raid 0 on a desktop?

In over 20 years of system building I have never used just Raid 0. Raid 1+0(ok), Raid 0+1 (maybe) and Raid 5(slow but sure)

I await your demigodness reply enlightening us mere mortals on the wisdom of using Raid 0 only.

Re:Looking Forward To

[Anonymous Coward]

Like the backup application? Do a google on "Synctoy". You can run it on XP and 2000.

Jaded

[the eric conspiracy]

Let's be realistic. Who actually NEEDS Vista right now? Not many if anyone. Eventually people will need it to run something, but that day isn't here now and until it is Vista is a pain in the tookus because of DRM, compatability issues and hardware requirements.

Re:Mod parent has underrated! +5 troll

[nbritton]

Mod the parent underrated, I want to see a +5 troll!

This matters why?

[Toby_Tyke]

Really, the last time I can remember people rushing out in their masses to buy a windows upgrade was '95. Remember when XP came out? Sure, you get the usual early adopters rushing out to buy the thing on release day, but by and large they sell the things via pre-installs on OEM systems. The AT article points out that the growth in VIsta sales over XP sales track exactly to the growth in PC sales XP's release. That hardly means Vista is a failure, it just means that, like XP, the vast majority of users are waiting till they upgrade their PCs to buy Vista. Vista will almost certainly have a 50 percent or more share of the consumer desktop market in 2 or 3 years time, just like XP did. By the time we get the next windows iteration in 5 years (or whenever) it will have over 80 percent, just like XP does.

Joe user (whoever the hell he is), does not reinstall his OS. Christ, most users have no concept of what an OS is. They buy a PC, they use what comes on it. That's why Linux will never really take off on the home desktop until a large vendor has real success selling pre-installed Linux PCs. Hopefully, Dell are about to do just that.

Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe that Dell was savvy to this, and that's why they're expanding their linux offerings. restfulDell (and everybody else) knew that Vista would be a flop.

Never mind.

[nbritton]

Only on slashdot could a stooge come along and screw up a +5 troll rating.

no UP button in explorer?

[alucinor]

Just someone tell me PLEASE how I can get the UP navigation button in Windows Explorer? My job just forced us all to upgrade to Vista, and our laptops can *barely* run it plus IBM's RAD6 for development. And no up button is just the straw, you know, the freakin' straw.

Well, I'm posting this from Ubuntu Edgy at home right now at least. :-D

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use Backspace or just click on where you want to go in the tree. The up button is not needed.

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[Anonymous Coward]

You just click the name of the previous folder (not the little arrow). The functionality you lose from XP, is a consistent single button you can click over and over to navigate up the hierarchy, instead you have to visually re-parse the new folder name and its new parent and move the mouse as required to click on it. For simple folders on your local disk its usually no big deal, but if you are browsing a deeply nested UNC path and want to jump up 5 levels or so, it can be quite painful.

Re: no UP button in explorer?

[Dolda2000]

I just tried Vista briefly during the Beta period -- even I will have to support it for friends and family sooner or later, though I use Gentoo for all my personal needs -- so I'm not sure about this, but if memory serves, you can click each path element in the address bar to go directly to the corresponding directory. I guess that would be the replacement for the up button.

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[flyingfsck]

Hmm, Knoppix on a CD or Puppy on a USB stick should fix that for you. If you need something with more local storage space than a USB stick, then try installing Ubuntu on a USB disk drive.

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[SEMW]

instead you have to visually re-parse the new folder name and its new parent and move the mouse as required to click on it. For simple folders on your local disk its usually no big deal, but if you are browsing a deeply nested UNC path and want to jump up 5 levels or so, it can be quite painful. Uh, what? The whole point of it is that you can click anywhere in the 'path' and jump to that folder. So jumping up 5 levels now requires just one click rather than 5. How is this "more painful"?

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Uh, what? The whole point of it is that you can click anywhere in the 'path' and jump to that folder. So jumping up 5 levels now requires just one click rather than 5. How is this "more painful"?

I agree with you, but I can see the opposing point of view where one might prefer to click a button 5 times rather than move the mouse to a certain part of the path and then click.

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[Anonymous Coward]

right, and bookmarks are not needed, just retype the bloody URL.

Re:no UP button in explorer?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

What's the big deal? Click on the path and delete the part past what you want.

Simple reason

[Opportunist]

Businesses buy new computers, not hardware parts. Replacing parts takes time, and manhours cost money. More money than the new computers do. So what they buy is complete crates, and they don't buy them when some system comes out (unless it's a must-have 'cause SAP says so), they buy it when the time comes. So there is no increase in hardware sales, 'cause whatever sales exist would exist anyway when the life cycle of the old machines runs out.

Inexperienced home users do the same. They don't have the know how to replace parts, they buy a new crate whenever the old one either breaks apart or refuses to run whatever software they intend to use. We still have customers running Win95. Yes, I shiver myself (we're in the Antivirus biz).

And experienced home users know the issues of Vista and its restrictions and hassles, and they refrain from jumping onto it 'til they know that the less desireable parts can be disabled.

So, at least in my opinion, this makes a lot of sense.

Does anybody actually want Vista?

[falconcy]

I'm about to pick up a brand spanking new laptop in a couple of days. It comes complete with Vista, I have no choice in the matter. The first thing I am going to do is to slap a Kubuntu CD in the drive and get things set up the way I want it. I'm not holding my breath regarding getting a refund for Vista, and whilst I realize that actually bundling an Operating System with a new computer may help prevent piracy or even increase market share for Microsoft, it does not take on board the fact that not everybody wants Windows. I am aware that not all end users are IT literate and capable of deciding for themselves, although I'm surprised that the EU actually allows this monopolistic practice to continue.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[Shatrat]

You know you can buy laptops from system76.com which are basically asus chassis with linux-friendly hardware and ubuntu pre-installed?
Maybe you're getting the laptop through work or something, in which case maybe you really have no choice, but there are vendors out there that sell quality PCs without a windows tax and linux-friendly hardware.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[realmolo]

But their prices are *ridiculous*.

It would be much cheaper to just buy a Dell and put Ubuntu on it yourself.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple people I know are getting laptops soon. But they will be coming with OS X pre-installed. I got a new iMac 24" and it is sweet. Dunno about Vista but it runs XP, Kubuntu, oh and OS X pretty good. I'm thinking a MacBook would be cool too have too. Maybe I could spend more time sitting around at StarBucks. I dunno. But as an anecdote, out of the 5 people I know 4 have got macs who were previously XP users. My parents are gonna buy Macs soon too they think. They have been trying out my Bro's MacBookPro...

From my vantage point I think it's really bad news for MS. I don't expect them to collapse or anything. And many will migrate to Vista with new systems or whenever they do their next upgrade cycle. But I also think it's pretty good news for Apple.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[Shatrat]

Actually their prices are about normal for an asus chassis.
Not all laptops are created equal. There is a decided quality difference between a Dell (Quanta) and a system76 (ASUS).
Just because they cost more doesn't mean their prices are ridiculous. A porsche costs more than a camaro, but that doesn't necessarily make the price ridiculous.
Here is a chart of brands and the actual manufacturers. http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html
I think if you do a little research you'll find that ASUS are worth the money. A flimsy laptop is a sad thing.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[Douglas Goodall]

Make a system restore DVD before you blow off Windows. Just in case.

Re:Does anybody actually want Vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple people I know are getting laptops soon. But they will be coming with OS X pre-installed.

I'm sorry, that's what happens with gay couples.

Dunno about Vista but it runs XP, Kubuntu, oh and OS X pretty good. I'm thinking a MacBook would be cool too have too.

You might be bi.

Gasp! Re:Not a hotcake?

[diesel66]

Don't you ever, EVER talk about waffles that way!

(Waffles)

Bought in December

[dj245]

Anyone who took a minute to think about it bought their new machines back in December when computer makers were clearing out all their XP machines at fantastic discounts (in many cases). Often desktops and laptops alike were marked down $100 or $200 on a $700 machine. I told all my friends that if they wanted a new machine, December was the time to get it; probably before christmas because after Vista would start to rear its ugly head.

Unfortunately, I didn't follow my own advice and my laptop expired a week ago. I had to replace Vista Home Ultimate (or whatever) with XP Professional Student Ultra Pirated edition. Luckilly for me, the Acer 5610Z is not only a decent laptop, but it has great drivers for good ol' XP.

What sucks about the Windows UI?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Less sucky in what way? Anyone who knows how uses the classic start menu and control panel. The only thing that really leaves is the theme and anyone who is at all concerned about performance uses the windows classic theme. My gripes with the Windows 2000/XP interface...

• To say it was ugly is going to far it was more like mind numbingly dull. XP helped a little.
• I never much liked the start menu:
  1. Move the mouse pointer to the 'Start' button in the lower left corner,
  2. click,
  3. find the 'Programs' item,
  4. click,
  5. find the program you want,
  6. click.
  The quick-launch bar was a major improvement but I still like the OS.X dock better because of the magnification feature which makes it easier to hit the icon you want and the fact that the dock is simply easier and quicker to use. The new Windows start menu was, if anything worse than the old one. It had some nice features but it was badly organized. My first action on an XP system is always to set it back to 'classic' look .
• The Windows UI behaves in a way that I find infuriating, especially the way that applications steal the focus. This didn't change much with XP. It can be tweaked though.
• Endless reboots. XP was an improvement because it decreased their frequency.
• The endless OK and Apply buttons are annoying. Somehow OS.X and some Linux desktops and even Windows Mobile seem to manage without them.
• The ceaseless stupid questions about whether or not I am sure I want to do this that or the other thing are annoying. I'm not saying they are alwasy unwanted but it would be nice if Microsoft were to reduce their number.
• Having to click one's way through endless configuration app windows to perform simple reconfigurations is annoying. I can modify system preferences in OS.X with far fewer mouse clicks than I can in Windows 2000 or XP.
• When you have a large number of windows open in 2000 and XP finding a particular one is not easy. They tried to solve this in XP by grouping buttons for a particular app. It helped but it wasn't a good solution. I haven't used Vista, but judging from demonstrations of the 'Rolodex' feature they added in to trump 'Exposé' it looks like a huge improvement.

I'm sure that all these things can either be changed by setting some radio button in a not so easy to find configuration window, tweaked with a third party utility or if all fails modified by changing registry settings but I chose to switch to something that works the way I want it to out of the box and it's into the bargain more secure but that's a matter for a whole other flame-war.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[Bender Unit 22]

The dock is better than quicklaunch but I really miss the taskbar.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[SEMW]

I never much liked the start menu:
Move the mouse pointer to the 'Start' button in the lower left corner, click,
find the 'Programs' item, click,
find the program you want, click.
The quick-launch bar was a major improvement [...] The new Windows start menu was, if anything worse than the old one. It had some nice features but it was badly organized. Just out of interest, what are your views on how they've changed the sequence in Vista? (In case you haven't seen Vista, summary: Press the windows key (or click the start button), type a few letters from the name of the program/document/folder/etc. you want to open, press enter. Screenshot.)

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[darkjedi521]

Quicklaunch has been in there since Windows 98. So, its not exactly a "new" thing in XP.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[swillden]

Just out of interest, what are your views on how they've changed the sequence in Vista? (In case you haven't seen Vista, summary: Press the windows key (or click the start button), type a few letters from the name of the program/document/folder/etc. you want to open, press enter.

Really? Cool. That's much better, though it can still be improved a little more. What they need to do next is add tab completion, then the ability to type arguments to the program/whatever, then the ability to chain programs together, automatically making the operation of the first control the operation of the second.

They will then have created the perfect computer interface.

The command line.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[dabraun]

The quick-launch bar was a major improvement

For those who don't know, the quick launch bar was introduced as part of IE 4.0 in 1997, it is by no means a win2k/xp/vista feature. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was disabled by default in XP (but enabled by default in win2k and vista). I believe that in XP microsoft thought the 'recent apps' addition to the start menu replaced the need for quick launch, but by Vista the realized that it did not ...

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[SEMW]

They will then have created the perfect computer interface.
The command line. ...So you know of a command line shell with the capability that, upon a few letters being typed in, can instantaneously (as-you-type) display a list of all programs, documents, emails, folders, etc. which contain those letters in their filename; all sorted by category and openable?

If not, I'll stick with the start menu, thanks.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[pwizard2]

In fact, I'm pretty sure it was disabled by default in XP

It is. You have to actively enable it.

In fact, very little about XP's default config makes sense- the recycle bin is down in the lower-right hand corner, making it easily missed at first since it is not where you normally expect it to be (somewhere in the upper left hand corner. also, the "My Computer" icon is nowhere to be seen, casing me to waste my time adding it.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[atrocious cowpat]

I still like the OS.X dock better because of the magnification feature which makes it easier to hit the icon you want and the fact that the dock is simply easier and quicker to use.

Ah, there you have me. I'm a Mac-Fanperson as they come, but I've always hated that "Magnification-Thingy" (one of my favourite UIs is still the old SOFTIMAGE 3D-UI: Loads of Text-Info, but constrained to finite areas to the left (or right) of your screen.) In fact that's how i always set up my Mac-Dock: depending on (Multi-Monitor)-Screen-Real-Estate it's on the left or the right side, but always vertical.

With the amount of programs I like to have handy the most important info isn't the icons, but rather the relative position of the icon or, indeed, the text-info you get when "mousing over" a prog(app)-icon.

The only time I leave the "Dock" on the bottom of the screen (default) is when I configure Macs for complete "newbies": I want them to see the Dock as they were introduced to it.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[SL Baur]

The Z-shell and it's been doing it for a long time.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[und0]

...So you know of a command line shell with the capability that, upon a few letters being typed in, can instantaneously (as-you-type) display a list of all programs, documents, emails, folders, etc. which contain those letters in their filename; all sorted by category and openable?

Mmh, zsh?

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[Anonymous Coward]

I still like the OS.X dock better because of the magnification feature which makes it easier to hit the icon you want

Isn't the target area the same for a magnified icon as it would be for an unmagnified one, even though the pretty picture is overlapping nearby target areas?

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[rtb61]

Do you know that quick launch is actually IE and that is the main reason not to use. Think your safer using firefox, well you not once your running IE to launch it.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[MioTheGreat]

You're in luck. Someone released a 'power-toy' like thing that does just that.

Behold! Start++

http://brandontools.com/default.aspx

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[MioTheGreat]

I believe that quicklaunch is a Desk Band object. They do not use IE. IE can load Tool band objects into itself, which are similar, but loading a deskband into explorer shouldn't use any IE components.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[swillden]

...So you know of a command line shell with the capability that, upon a few letters being typed in, can instantaneously (as-you-type) display a list of all programs, documents, emails, folders, etc. which contain those letters in their filename; all sorted by category and openable?

zsh is very close. You do have to hit the tab key to get the list.

And the start menu doesn't support looping, pipes, conditional execution, command arguments, etc., etc., etc.

Does the start menu support URLs, remote file shares, and Google and Wikipedia searches?

If not, I'll stick with the start menu, thanks.

To each his own. I'll stick with the vastly more powerful command line.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[rtb61]

Monitor processes and you will see it launch.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[SEMW]

Thanks to everyone who mentioned zsh; I genuinely did not know it could do that -- I've only ever used bash, and even that not very much.

Does the start menu support URLs, remote file shares, and Google and Wikipedia searches? Yes to the URLs and remote file shares, I've just checked. For Google/wiki/etc. searches there's a neat little customisable add-on called start++ which gives you that capability (and, among other things, also lets you launch something with admin privs by prepending 'sudo', which is a bit cheeky -- I think you're right, it is turning into a command line, and a *nix one at that...)

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[swillden]

Thanks to everyone who mentioned zsh; I genuinely did not know it could do that -- I've only ever used bash, and even that not very much.

bash can actually do it to a large degree as well, when configured properly, but not nearly as well as zsh.

For Google/wiki/etc. searches there's a neat little customisable add-on called start++ which gives you that capability (and, among other things, also lets you launch something with admin privs by prepending 'sudo', which is a bit cheeky -- I think you're right, it is turning into a command line, and a *nix one at that...)

The 'sudo' thing is funny. It makes sense, though. Inexperienced computer users like icons they can poke through to find the thing they want to do, but experienced users are more effective with a more general UI, and it's hard to beat a smart command shell. Most heavy Windows users I know make frequent use of "Run", "cmd" to get a command line, and that in spite of the fact that cmd is a lousy command shell. Microsoft has been talking about their new command shell, monad; perhaps the Visa start menu is a piece of that.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[MioTheGreat]

Uh, no it doesn't. If you open Process Monitor (From Sysinternals), and watch what happens when you use the quick launch bar, you get 'explorer.exe' does a 'Process Create' on the target of the link you clicked. IE is not involved.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI?

[w0lo]

It does not use IE, but the shell components that implement desk bands comes from IE 4 (Win95 does not have quicklaunch, install IE4 (This includes a new Explorer.exe/Shell) and you get the "win98 look")

Dell DOES sell naked PCs

[plasticsquirrel]

Every time some issue like this comes up, someone writes about how they wish Dell sold naked PC's. They have -- for years. Dell's naked PC's are called the n-Series desktops. They're listed as "open source desktops" on the Dell website. They only contain a minimal FreeDOS installation for legal reasons, which is meant to be wiped clean by your favorite OS installer. And from what I've seen, they're the same price or less than the Windows models.

Re:Dell DOES sell naked PCs

[ozmanjusri]

They only contain a minimal FreeDOS installation for legal reasons

Which law are they conforming to?

Can you link to the relevant statute please?

Re:Dell DOES sell naked PCs

[Hymer]

I'll guess s/he is referring to the 1st. Microsoft law: "You may not sell a PC without an OS on it."

There are however some problems in some countries where a naked PC may not be considered a "full working product" when there is no OS on it (because it can't do anything) it is then considered a "spare part" wich creates problems with the warranty (wich may be regulated by law).

Surefire way to sell Vista:

[Kredal]

1. Make sure DirectX 10 is Vista only.
2. Pressure Blizzard to upgrade WoW to DirectX 10
3. ???
4. Profit!!

Eight million copies of Vista will be sold in the next week, I promise you.

Re:Surefire way to sell Vista:

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run WoW under OpenGL.

Re:Surefire way to sell Vista:

[justinlee37]

WoW will never raise system requirements, they'd lose current subscribers.

Re:Surefire way to sell Vista:

[Unicorn Giggles]

you sir, a an evil genius.

Boycotting Vista

[Andypcguy]

Im not planning to run Vista on my box unless I find that I have to in order to do the things I want to with my PC. I refuse to purchase DRM riddled products that prevent me from using the media I legitimately purchased, the way that I want to. Im not interested in backroom deals that determine that if I buy song X at store A I can only play it on player 123. Sorry Microshaft and Itunes until you guys start representing me Im voting with my dollarsIm siding with the independent party.

games intact, functionality removed

[micrometer2003]

I had to order it pronto to help a customer who could not access our app using COM (9-pin connector in back). Also found out upon arrival, there was no place to plug in the printer and the MIDI gear. Ok to leave out the solitaire game but it doesn't seem like business sense to leave out so much connectivity in one upgrade.

Re:games intact, functionality removed

[cdrguru]

And the dropping of "legacy" hardware is somehow Microsoft's issue with Vista?

I will agree that removing parallel, MIDI/Game ports, 2 serial ports and so on from desktop machines doesn't really make a lot of sense. The assumption seems to be that everyone has migrated over to USB completely.

But this isn't a Microsoft issue at all and has nothing to do with Vista.

Re:games intact, functionality removed

[micrometer2003]

Umm, actually it did involve operating system components being changed/removed. The physical connector was present (on the client h/w) but it was not sufficient in and of itself. I rush ordered a cheap box that lacked all of the physical fittings and added them later. New drivers using ".net" are needed and are being developed/tested.

Not selling?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I bet you $100 that if it's not already the case, there will be more Vista desktops than XXX desktops by the end of the year for any choice of free XXX.

Yay?

[Almahtar]

Which is why people should be using OpenGL.

Re:Yay?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which version with which extensions work on my video card? opengl drivers? whats that?

Truth in Marketing

[Nom du Keyboard]

I've ordered the free Vista upgrade for the systems I bought in January, but have no intent of installing them any time soon.

Truth is, with product activation required, MS could give you a truthful figure of just how many Vista systems have been activated. But, Nooo, that would be lower number and they wouldn't be able to try and convince the weak-minded that Vista is taking over the world and you need to jump onto the bandwagon now, or be left behind forever. What a load of absolute crap.

this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[CAIMLAS]

However, it most certainly is a hotcake: people can't get rid of it fast enough. :)

Vista is a solution looking for a problem. Or maybe a problem looking for a solution - it's difficult to say, really. The fact is that Vista is not the OS that people have been waiting for from Microsoft since the inception of Windows 2000.

People don't want more bling in their OS. They are, in almost every subset of user, wanting something which Just Works. Since 1995, we've been bombarded with bling widget after bling widget - multimedia this, multimedia that. Even the candy-ass Fischer Price default theme of Windows XP was too much for most people. Most people are just fine with the Windows interface - and, if they're not (a characteristic usually shared with the ability to do something about it) there are plenty of shell replacements to chose from.

Yet, that is principally what Vista offers: more bling. It does not deliver on any of its meritous promises. It does not improve the underlying operating system to any significant degree. They've crawled out onto a massive monolythic limb and have decided to start chopping firewood by destroying the one thing that has made Windows dominant: its highly marketed user interface. People do not want to learn new things, as a rule, when it's useless to do so. In a way, this is an example of them being an enemy of their own success: the Windows interface has been so widely accepted that it's become standard and expected, and with it installed on the vast majority of machines, why change?

Techies, on the other hand, do not have such a luxury, as it is our job to learn these new things and make them work for everyone else. If they'd only promised on half of the underlying technologies (just fix the infrastructure and security/defaults, thanks), it would've captured the Windows XP market by storm.

Similarly, techies view Vista as just as much of a change to another OS, like MacOS or Linux, without having any of the benefits. What would you get? New incompatibilities and technology without any inherrent gain by switching operating systems. This is Microsoft's own fault - not only for ignoring what people (techies and users) want in their OS, but also for building up a single, monolythic product, unable to be disassociated from any of its individual components and accessories. Where would Linux be if, for every minor kernel release, there was an associated base distro, X, and wm release? Nowhere - probably stuck somewhere around 2.0 still.

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[turing_m]

"Vista is a solution looking for a problem. Or maybe a problem looking for a solution - it's difficult to say, really."

Vista is MS's solution for maintaining their revenue stream. As far as I can work out, the plan goes like this:

1. Come out with a new Office suite that breaks forward compatible with previous versions.
            - perhaps they will use as bait a new "open but not open" document format such as OOXML.
2. Bombard users with advertising until they perceive the new Office as working better in Vista.
3. Existing Office users get sick of receiving OOXML files from Office upgraders and decide that since they need the new Office they may as well get the OS it works best on, i.e. Vista.
4. Profit. (...for one more upgrade cycle)

I'm not sure what they are going to do after that one, if that plan even works. Their situation is becoming more and more like that of Batman/MacGuyver at the end of a "To be continued" episode.

Will MS come up with a new open document format to end all document formats? Will a new killer app be found that renders all our computers obsolete? Will Ballmer be committed to a highly secure, chair-free insane asylum?

Find out in a few years! Same bat time, same bat channel!

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[smash]

Have you actually used vista much yet? On semi-decent hardware?

Yet, that is principally what Vista offers: more bling. It does not deliver on any of its meritous promises. It does not improve the underlying operating system to any significant degree.

That's a little shortsighted. Large portions have been re-written as managed code, the network stack has been re-written, the security model is different, the audio subsystem is completely new, etc. Time will tell if the re-writing will actually be of any serious improvement, but to pass the whole thing off as mere "bling" is being a little hasty.

After using vista for a couple of weeks, i can think of a number of improvements in the interface that I really miss when going back to XP - the new start menu you can easily scroll through, flip3d (yes, it's kinda lame, but I do miss it, i'm an alt+tab freak, windows+tab makes it easier to find which window you want), the new address bar, etc.

The user interface changes are not massive - they're minor tweaks which do make a difference.

No, they're not killer features, but I'm a lot more happy with the interface changes in vista compared to the changes that happened between Win2k and XP.

But I disagree with your point anyway - the interface is not what has sold windows and kept it there, it's the applications. The Windows interface has been copied plenty by Linux distros and it hasn't helped them at all.

Irrespective of all this, Vista will take off within 18 months as people start requiring more than 4 gigs of RAM. XP doesn't support more than 4gig unless you go to XP 64 bit, which is a dead end product if you ask me...

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[jez9999]

Irrespective of all this, Vista will take off within 18 months as people start requiring more than 4 gigs of RAM. XP doesn't support more than 4gig unless you go to XP 64 bit, which is a dead end product if you ask me...

4 GIGABYTES should be enough for anyone.

No, really, this isn't a Bill Gates joke; aside from gamers, things are getting absolutely ridiculous if the average user needs more than this in the near future. Even video applications and Photoshop, etc. don't need 4 gigs to function perfectly.

I remember talking to a guy, a few years ago, who had 4GB of RAM in his web server so he could load a large DB into memory. I remember thinking how enormous that figure sounded. How absurd that anybody is seriously suggesting that more might be needed for general use PCs soon.

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[drsmithy]

It does not improve the underlying operating system to any significant degree.

It would appear you have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[GigsVT]

Large portions have been re-written as managed code

Call it what it is: Scripted in interpreted code. When you use their words you let them control your mind.

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[smash]

aside from gamers

Do you know anyone who owns a *home* PC, who has no games installed? That segment of the market is pretty small methinks.

Besides, I already have business users who could do with more than 4 gigs of RAM. They're attempting to manipulate 2+gb (file size, no idea how big they would be uncompressed) 3d models (they're mine geologists). Currently, if they're running processing on their machine they can't do anything else with it.

Virtualisation/sandboxing will be a "killer app" for more memory as well - i could sure do with about 8-12 gigs of ram and a few more CPUs myself for virtualisation to use as a "test" environment.

Manipulating uncompressed HD quality video?

There's plenty of uses for it... just because you don't use it, doesn't mean there aren't plenty of legitimate uses either out there or on the horizon within 12-18 months or so...

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[CAIMLAS]

Yeah, but their revenue is not my concern. I give shitall of a damn about it. My concern is having an OS that I can install on systems and have it run reliably and securely.

Re:this is not the hotcake you're looking for...

[CAIMLAS]

Oh you forgot an item between 3 and 4, "Degrade the performance and stability of existing products gradually with updates, so that people decide it's time for a switch."

Windows OS

[browng]

The operating system is focused on when installing/uninstalling programs and peripherals which for the average user may account for a relatively small amount of time vs. checking e-mail, surfing the web and writing documents. Therefore, most of the time, people are using applications instead of the OS. In this case, the most important feature of the OS is stability. For virtually everyone I know, XP home and professional reached a reasonable level of stability.

How about some drivers

[Sir_Sri]

Lets see why no vista adoption?

1. Both AMD/ATi and Nvidia drivers give crappy performance, and the newest hardware generation of G80's BSOD'd in XP, and slows down (granted not a huge amount, but it slows down) in vista. Yes, I have a G80.
2. Creative sound card drivers are virtually non existant. What good is my 7.1 surround sound if it doesn't work?
3. What does vista do for 'me'? (actually quite a lot but that's beside the point). People don't know why their computer is slow when it has 500 different pieces of spyware and half a dozen viruses, why on earth would they conclude a more secure operating system with help them (or one advertised as such)? Without a minimal ability to diagnose existing problems (hmm my car is on fire kind of problems, not there's a crack in an O-ring kind of problem) people don't appreciate what, if anything vista would do for them.
4. Deserved bad press. UAC is braindead. I can buy UAC as a firewall style app (first time you click on an app is yay or nays it, if it changes it yay or nays it). As it is, it's unnecessarily annoying. Yes, I really did click on control panel.
5. If I'm going to buy vista which version is right for me? What's the difference between 32 and 64 bit? Why don't my 4 Gigs of ram work? It's too damn confusing. Vista should have two versions: Home, and Corporate. Home should more or less be vista ultimate. Corporate should be well, corporate, enterprise licenses, no media center that sort of stuff. Oh and they should only come in a 64 bit flavour, or only a 32 bit flavour, not this crazy half and half.
6. People who have vista have no great reason to be happy. Lots of apps don't work. If I show vista (I have vista on two machines) to people the first thing they notice as a bad idea is the start menu-> programs is all compacted. Exact oppposite of what should have happened compared to XP. Critical interface design flaw.
7. Do I give a shit about wigits or whatever they're called? No.
8. Upgrading. Given all of the above, and the bunch of backwards compatability issues (related mostly to 16 bit installers, and popular apps like itunes), why would I want to necessarily replace my system, with whatever flaws it has, at least those I know something about. There's no sense intentionally breaking applications I already use.
9. Critical apps (ie antivirus, which people usually don't bother to update or use properly but know enough to purchase, thinking that will help, even if they don't install it), don't all come in working vista versions off the same shelf.

I think the critical points are more hardware vendors than MS's fault (and to some extent this applies to any OS), without useful drivers the hardware just doesn't work. Some of that stuff is just 'well on a new system you get vista' kinda thing. And some of it will be rectified with time, installers compatability etc... XP had some backwards compatability issues, it apparently still has some driver issues etc... and it still rules the roost, Vista will likely get there, but MS could have made this a lot easier on themselves and everyone else.

How sad.

[Cervantes]

Really, how sad. I wish I could be so unfortunate and unlucky and untalented as to sell 20 million copies of my software in 2 months.

Poor Redmond. I feel for you.

Two words for you....

[Anonymous Coward]

Clear Type.

2007 is the year for Linux on the Desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

APRIL FOOLS!!!

- From the omgponies dept.

Acronyms

[petrus4]

First we had Windows NT, then we had Windows XP. I've long thought that if Microsoft were honest, Vista actually *should* have been called Windows DOA. ;-)

Next me

[kahrytan]

Perhaps Windows Vista is Microsoft 'new' Windows ME. We all know how well Windows Me did. All I see is a Nice Interface while taking control of the users computer through DRM and so-called security additions. I vow to let XP be my last. It's Linux onward for me.

Windows 2000 was NOT a mainstream OS

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Unlike Vista, XP really DIDN'T offer anything Windows 2000 didn't already have, except for the improved interface and related APIs. Ok, it had system restore too - but that was pretty much it.

Why do people keep comparing XP with Windows 2000? Windows 2000 wasn't a mainstream OS. The upgrade path for 99% of windows users was from Win9x to XP (a huge improvement) or NT4 to XP. My own upgrade path went from Win98 to XP at home, and NT4 to XP at work. I never saw Windows 2000 running, and know nobody that did.

But I agree with the gist of your post. :p

Re:Windows 2000 was NOT a mainstream OS

[aj50]

My own upgrade path went from Win98 to XP at home, and NT4 to XP at work. I never saw Windows 2000 running, and know nobody that did.

Man, you missed out. I used Windows 2000 at school, college and when I was on work experience at IBM. It was graphically similar to from 98 but very stable and without the bloatedness of XP. When my college 'upgraded' to XP, not much changed except the older computers in the labs ran slower.

You are correct though that most home users never saw 2000 (probably with the exception of those who had used it at work and seen how much of an improvement it was over 98)

Re:Windows 2000 was NOT a mainstream OS

[Anonymous Coward]

windows users != home windows users, sucka. Windows 2000 was very welcomed in offices and well XP here is a regression.

Re:What sucks about the Windows UI? nothing at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Three ways to make the Windows UI not-a-problem, at at total cost of nil:

http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/nt/TXMouse/
http://www.ntwind.com/software/taskswitchxp.html
and, the ultimate windows UI killer app

http://www.launchy.net/

Set XP to classic windows.

  Launchy is a popup (default alt-space) which finds and launches an app based on a)what you use the most and b) the first few letters of its name. You never need the start menu except for the rare things whose name you can't remember. Unintrusive install.

Task switch is alt-tab with a mini-view of the window so you can see where you are going, and you can choose with the mouse,

TXmouse is what the lame MS attempt should have done.

disclaimer: no relation to the devs; just an admirer of great free software

hey!

[Phil Urich]

Are you dissing Microsoft Bob?

Well I know what you said that wasn't the point, but still . . . people talk down about Bob too much. It was cool, dammit! Admittedly I was in middle school at the time, but still. I'm not sure I can think of any example of innovation more radical, shifting the paradigm from desktop to a house, seriously now the meeting where they came up with that must have been "man, I'm soooooo high right now . . . oh heyheyhey, you know what would be awesome? Say, like, instead of clicking on icons, programs and files were, like objects in a virtual house! Ohhhh man that'd be sweet."

Sad that the only thing to survive that was the damn dog. Most of the other avatars were cool and quirky, but no, no future for them.

Hmm. I think I'm going to re-download Bob, boot into Vista, and see if I can hack it into running . . . on that note, I wonder if WINE runs it? Damn, doesn't seem to work.

Or to sum this up on-topic, maybe a new MS Bob could be the killer app? Market as a UI for kids, mayhaps?

New Computer

[LBt1st]

My brother plans on getting a computer today. I'm assuming it'll come preloaded with Vista. He's not tech savy and lives on the other side of the country. So now I'm bracing myself for the inevitable problems he'll be having. If it were possible for him to buy a new computer with XP that would have been more ideal. If anything, Vista is a reason Not to buy a PC right now!

Re:New Computer

[Phist]

No kidding. I bought a new computer a few months ago because I needed a faster machine. It was right about the time all the stores installed Vista on everything. I use all sorts of different programs but my new and faster portable computer with Vista on it could only run about 20% of the programs I use. I actually had to order a copy of XP just so I could use my new and faster computer. Vista all by itself is nice and everything but it is more important that I am able to run the programs I need to run. Anyway, I told everyone I know who is not a newb with computers to be prepared to purchase XP if they are wanting to buy a new computer.

Not Aprils Fool?

[Movi]

I think this is the only story today that isn't an aprils fool joke. And if it is - the joke failed miserably.

Re:Not Aprils Fool?

[Teilo]

Check the article date.

I recently bought one with XP

[Rob Simpson]

One of these babies. I dual-boot with Linux Mint. I chose it over the "new and improved" model, which is not fanless like the P7120, and comes with Vista.

vista really *is* a large step up

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly is vista a large step up?

Re:The REAL seller

[RockoTDF]

When oh when are people going to understand that OS X upgrades are NOT a point release!? Keeping it as "OS X" instead of moving on to XI makes sense on a number of levels...X is a nice round number, and the X gives it the whole Unix connection. You download the point releases as a part of system upgrades...hence the 10.y.z thing.

But that's only because

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac fanboys are sheeple who are willing to pay the $129 annual Apple tax without thought.

In five years there has been no substantial changes to OS-X. Why would you expect one with Leopard?

Vista Sales not quite as expected

[Oshkoshjohn]

The main reason for the flagging sales has to be the fact that Windows XP Professionbal, if completely up-to-date and secured, is pretty much the same thing as Vista minus the flashy video gimcrackery.

I was one of the first people to adapt to WIN XP when it came OEM with an Athlon 1800, and that product was not nearly completely under control until it was almost four years old! I will wait for Service Pack One to be applied to Vista before I jump this time.

What IT really wants

[Shadowlore]

Corporate IT departments care about compatibility, stability, security and ease-of-support among other things.

I disagree. IT wants us to think that but it generally isn't the reality. Some IT reality:

* Most employees do not need Internet access and publicly available email.
* Most employees do not need office suites
* Many employees, perhaps most in the broad category of "employees" do not need computers.

The reality of it is that if IT really wanted security, ease of support, and stability, they would spend time analyzing the actual business needs of the company and move in that direction. Take for example a 4000 person company that makes widgets. The vast majority of those employees more often than not will have no business need for public email or Internet access. The sales and marketing force, execs, PR people, and the engineers should have it. But the people on the floor, the custodial crew, etc. generally will have no need for it.

A company can have internal email access and even an intranet without giving everyone an external email account or Internet access. This dramatically reduces not only the cost of IT but the attack vectors, security issues, and support requirements. If a 4000 person company can work with only say 150 Internet-connected employees they will see dramatic savings over that same company giving email and Internet to everyone there. Those with public access can be set on their own "network" treated similarly to a DMZ.

Instead, IT like any other of the corporate bureaucracies seeks to expand and maintain itself. Thus rather than recommend that the groups that have no business need for public access not have it, they instead lobby for more money to expand support bodies, more money for more software, etc.. No, generally speaking corporate IT is interested in sustaining and growing itself; not security, nor compatibility, stability, or ease of support - let alone advancing the business of the company.

So many reasons not to email editable documents

[myowntrueself]

What we, as a community, need to do is to discourage people from sending documents in editable formats when the recipient is not intended to edit the damn document.

One nice way I can think of takes advantage of a great feature enabled by default in MS word et.al. Its the 'fast save' feature where all of the changes to a document are preserved when you save it.

What happens is that when you email that word document to someone they get to read all the juicy edits you did, all of the deleting and spelling mistakes, typos etc. Its all there.

It would be handy if there was a way to save the document in such a way that you could return it to the sender with all that crap plainly visible.

Anybody actually want Vista? Yes, if its free

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as you have a legit copy you might as well keep it around. Dual booting means you get all the linux goodness you need, and if you need some windows-only hardware/software then you have the option to use it. Plus, if you manage to break linux (you can if you try, I've done it), then you have another OS to use.

Prettier, but far more annoying.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Personally, I think the Vista interface is far better than XP, which I hated.

It looks prettier, I'll give you that. But crap like UAC or the poor drivers & DRM that make multimedia suck make Vista a piece of crap right now. TV Tuner cards do *not* seem to work right for any of my friends and these are all brand new machines.

For some reason, I'm reminded of Futurama where Lucy Lu-bot kept asking Fry to "take a moment to register me?" Except that this asks vapid questions like "Do you want to execute the program you just double-clicked on? Programs can be dangerous. [ Accept ] [ Cancel ]"

I wish I were kidding about them being that damn stupid, but that's almost exactly what the UAC prompt said.