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Pimp Your XP
An anonymous reader writes "Ezinearticles.com has up an interesting article on how you can improve Windows XP to mimic and even surpass Vista — at least some of its new features. Several of the suggestions cost money and others are free. From improving the user interface with Stardock to mimicking new security features with open source software such as Sudown, the article discusses many ways that die-hard XP users can enhance their environment without moving to Vista."
...but how do you simulate the hardware incompatibilities? I suppose you could get all your old peripherals a pour coffee in them, but I don't think that's really going to give you the same sense of frustration that you'd get with Vista.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I'm not sure of the value of tacking on features to XP to make it more like Vista, especially when such features cost money. I mean, if you want Vista-like stuff, why don't you just pay the upgrade fee and get a complete, well-tested package instead of a bunch of disjoint shareware utilities?
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Linux is *not* user friendly, and until it is linux will stay with >1% marketshare.
/tmp or the installer will dump core. After the installer is done, edit /etc/X11/XF86Config and add a section called "GL" and put "driver nv" in it. Make sure you have the latest version of X and Linux kernel 2.6 or else X will segfault when you start. OK, run the Quake 3 installer and make sure you set the proper group and setuid permissions on quake3.bin. If you want sound, look here [link to another obscure web site], which is a short HOWTO on how to get sound in Quake 3. That's all there is to it!"
Take installation. Linux zealots are now saying "oh installing is so easy, just do apt-get install package or emerge package": Yes, because typing in "apt-get" or "emerge" makes so much more sense to new users than double-clicking an icon that says "setup".
Linux zealots are far too forgiving when judging the difficultly of Linux configuration issues and far too harsh when judging the difficulty of Windows configuration issues. Example comments:
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Linux?"
Zealot: "Oh that's easy! If you have Redhat, you have to download quake_3_rh_8_i686_010203_glibc.bin, then do chmod +x on the file. Then you have to su to root, make sure you type export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5 but ONLY if you have that latest libc6 installed. If you don't, don't set that environment variable or the installer will dump core. Before you run the installer, make sure you have the GL drivers for X installed. Get them at [some obscure web address], chmod +x the binary, then run it, but make sure you have at least 10MB free in
User: "How do I get Quake 3 to run in Windows?"
Zealot: "Oh God, I had to install Quake 3 in Windoze for some lamer friend of mine! God, what a fucking mess! I put in the CD and it took about 3 minutes to copy everything, and then I had to reboot the fucking computer! Jesus Christ! What a retarded operating system!"
So, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that what seems easy and natural to Linux geeks is definitely not what regular people consider easy and natural. Hence, the preference towards Windows.
this is nothing but an advert dressed up as content
none of these enhancements are listed as free
also of note is if you actually was stupid enough to purchase all these addons it would actually cost you more than an genuine OEM copy of Vista
must be a slow news day if this story is the best Slashdot can do, perhaps the submitter would have more joy over at digg.com where spam seems to of found a home but at least it can be deleted/dugg down, i guess this spam story shows you that the firehose is a waste of time
The author mentions costs all the way through this article, this costs, that costs, and none of it is cheap. I got an OEM vista ultimate for £120 ($240) which from the looks of it is actually cheaper than the cost of pimping my XP.
Not to mention, this is a hell of alot of software, I mean, he's talking about installing several toys that will run 24/7 and of course this is gonna sap your processing power, and its not integrated, so it'll probably end up using more resources than vista.
I was going to respond, but I can see that you are talking crap and it will all be wasted on you.
So I will simply say, I think that you meant "1%". You were doing alright until that sentence, but it went downhill after that...
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
to seperate userinterface from operating system..
I mean, the article has a nice list of things you can do instead of upgrading to Vista,
however the main principle that is highlighted has been logic to most developers for decades:
1. Seperate logic from userinterface
2. Seperate into small logical components
3. you achieve better programs which are easier to maintain and upgrade. (which is often as good as profit)
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
Good to see that /. edits out useful symbols.
"So I will simply say, I think you meant less than 1% rather than greater than 1%"
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
[flame] Guess that just shows that Vista is nothing more than a new GUI slapped on top of the same good old rotten mountain of windows code, we've come to hate (or love) [/flame]
That's a troll right? More than 40 million copies have been sold.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
Runs fine for me. Only problem I have had is a faulty HP DVD-Rom driver.
All you need to run Vista happily is an Intel quad-core overclocked to 4GHz, 4Gb RAM and twin nVidia 8800 GTX video cards.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
you do realise this is a webiste that is known as a MFA or made-for-adsense site
squidoo, associatedcontent etc etc they are nothing more than havens for spammers hawking other peoples products trying to supplement their pocket money instead of getting a job mowing the neighbours lawn
Manufacturers make their own DVD-ROM drivers?!
It seems that this article completely skips over the possibility of replacing Explorer with something less crap. I don't just mean the file browser, I mean the desktop, start menu, etc.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
We recently bought an OEM version of Vista at work in order to test our software on it and become a little more familiar with it. My colleague and myself dislike it with a passion. Not merely the interface but also the way they managed to re-shuffle a lot of options and settings around. Even though while most of them had quite logical places in XP.
;-)
My colleague doesn't like all the fancyness on the desktop (not merely talking about Vista here, same applies to XP) and so he always changes everything to be as clear as possible. To my surprise this is still possible in Vista! It took him a few minutes but in the end he managed to end up with a desktop which manages to resemble Windows 98 in quite some detail.
To be honost this still strikes me as odd. On the other hand it also makes me convinced that the Windows 98 interface isn't as bad or obsolete as some people portrait it.
The only thing I'm wondering about now though is if its also possible to give Vista an XP look
Installing Quake 3. Hmmm...
:p
1. sudo apt-get install quake3
2. Wait a few minutes...
There, done! Didn't even have to reboot.
Just for reference, before slashdot hit this article, it had >100 hits (after 6 days online), now 2000 and rising by ~50/min
yeah, well, that's ok if you don't want to use Aero...
As the article admits, there is no current way to get DirectX 10 onto XP. Though the article makes a good point that there are very few DirectX 10 games on the market, they will eventually come and diehard gamers will face a difficult choice. This could be MS's only workable strategy for general Vista adoption because, fundamentally, there is no reason that anyone would want to use Windows anymore aside from games (or because of mandated OS at employer, though that situation raises the question of why the CIO hasn't be fired for gross negligence in funds appropriations, especially for Vista, which doesn't run Office 2000 any better than XP).
On the other hand, maybe game developers will shy away from DirectX 10 because of the risk of losing a sizable market share. Diehard gamers could also prove finicky. Could this artificial attempt to tie DirectX10 with Vista to force upgrades result in a resurgence of OpenGL adoption in the gaming industry? One can only hope.
Apparently with Vista, even your keyboard or DVD-ROM drive can be rendered incompatible.
Me, I'm still trying to track down the driver for my monitor, so I can get the blazed thing out of 640x480 16 colors.
I gave up on the mouse. It was a Microsoft mouse, but last year's rev.
...window translucency for XP. thats the only thing that attracted me to vista, as i would just use litestep on it anyway.
Bzzzt!
Vista doesn't support SLI properly yet. Any support it does have, causes massive performance cuts. Trust me. I saw a 50% increase in speed when going from Vista to XP on a monster PC. 3DMark2006 score went from 10,000 to over 13,000 just with an OS change.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
But does it emulate Linux?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
1. Go to this homepage, choose a mirror and download image.
2. Burn image on CD
3. Insert CD, follow instructions
4. ???
5. Profit!
They're an idiot for responding... right... ...and you did what now?
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
I tried the beta a while back and was unimpressed. Then, yesterday, I went out and bought a laptop with the intention of putting Ubuntu on it. It came with Vista Home on it. I gave it a chance while the Ubuntu installer was downloading. Holy crap, it actually got worse. It seems like they ripped stuff off from OS X solely for the sake of ripping it off. The sidebar that contains "gadgets" is a complete waste of screen real estate, with a distracting slideshow and a completely redundant clock a few hundred pixels above the taskbar clock by default. It was slow as hell, and the eyecandy made the machine grind to a halt. All in all, the interface was made less navigable and slower.
The story has a happy ending, though. After Ubuntu's installer crashed and Gentoo proved to be a pain in the ass, I traded it in for a Mac.
YzDock and YzShadow and YzToolbar all add great functionality to XP. Low resources, too.
I've been using Stardock's Windowblinds for 2 years now. Recently I started using some of their other interface changing tools as well.
Windowblinds makes Windows XP SOOOO much nicer in my opinion. I wouldn't run XP without it. I love being able to customize my interface, change whatever I want, when I want.
The community at www.wincustomize.com is fantastic, and people are always designing new skins, new backgrounds, etc.
Stardock is fantastic. I love their products a ton.
Isn't that the game with numbers in rows and columns?
:(){
That includes OEM licenses. Like the one I'm not using because I downgraded my new Laptop to XP after it wouldn't run my stuff in Vista. Of course, not everyone has done this but many have.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Microsoft really have embraced the ways of old linux, they've created an OS that can do all the everyday tasks very well and is getting prettier. Alas you still have to keep a dual boot of XP if you want your hardware to work or play games
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Wasn't there a fable by Aesop about putting lipstick on pigs.
Yod'm 3D
Beryl-style cube desktop on Windows. Makes using the inferior OS a little better.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I read TFA.
I learned absolutely nothing about earning money by putting my XP to work performing sex acts with others.
"You're an idiot" not "Your an idiot" calling someone an idiot, and misspelling the first word, sort of nagates the whole post, don't you think?
Hey, I didn't upgrade to Vista (I had a "free" coupon to do so.) because: 1) Dell wouldn't guarantee all the software that came with my system (including AV) would work, 2) Dell said the same thing about my hardware, 3) I bought this system for games and I am not risking a performance loss.
Item #1 annoyed me, because the cost of anti-virus and other software is "included" in the cost of the system. If they were not going to work, I should have been offered more then "free" Vista, I should've been offered a rebate or discount for the software that would no longer work.
Item #2 pissed me off. You won't even guarantee your hardware works? Would I get one of those support hell phone calls if I tried to get support after installing Vista? As a note, since then, I have seen a firmware update for my DVD-RW on Dell's site because it apparently didn't work in Vista.
Can't go wrong with Explorer Breadcrumbs -- I'm using it on XP right now, and I don't miss Vista one bit.
I re-educated my NEW laptop to XP as well. Vista would not play well with others.
Output Firwall £20 (a year)
Directory Opus £35
Stardock £25
Total cost of Pimping your copy of XP to look like Vista £80, the look on your friends face as you tell them you bought Vista Home Basic for £56 Here
Priceless
In all seriousness why bother? The feature's discussed are all availiable in Home Basic and even if you compare this 'pimping' to the Home Premimum edition you can still get Vista cheaper (£70 at This site ) The only reason not to upgrade to Vista and doing this would be hardware incompatibility or your machine isn't capable of running it well (say you've only got 512mb of ram.)
This is why I switched to Fedora in the first place. It seems that the majority of software author on the Windows side, no matter how basic their product, releases an absolutely crippled shareware edition, and charges 29.95+ for the full edition. Looking for a simple utility to do something basic was painful, forcing one to trawl through badly designed pages, and be frustrated by yet another problem. This got exponentially worse on Vista, with the few freeware products being incompatible/really buggy. I go to Fedora, and it's as simple as searching the repository for some keyword with yumex or something, and downloading what I need. There's a multitude of completely free programs for every task. Some may not be fully functional, but that's not due to a decision by the authors.
> Your a idiot
Wow, someone that has trouble with 'a' vs 'an' is calling someone an idiot? Even worse, you seem to not know what the word 'you' means. With what you posted, you implied the OP owns an idiot. Are you the idiot he owns?
If you are hoping that I'm going to tell you now some way of getting DirectX 10 to work on Vista, you are going to be disappointed.
"A deadlock has been reached. One task must die. We must now choose between murder and suicide."
Wow, Windows XP and Vista must be good if even the Linux crowd can't stop talking about it! In other news, read in between bursts of tweaking your Vista install to run like it's XP, did you know that Microsoft is evil? Where's the Linux stuff, guys? I'm committed; all Linux, all the time on my shiny Ubuntu-ized laptop! Thank, you. Death to Microsoft.
It's So Nice To Be Nice.
This has come up in the recent past. What is it with all these people that they suddenly want to be procurers?
Here's a typical definition for pimp:
One who finds customers for a prostitute; a procurer. intr.v. , pimped , pimping , pimps
I don't know whether you should be modded Insightful, Interesting, Funny, or GoddamnedScary.
Are you serious when you say you have to have drivers to get your monitor, mouse, etc. to work? I have no plans on "downgrading" to Vista but I'll at least be able to warn some friends.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
I have a fully licensed copy of Win2K Pro that I have faithfully moved from machine to machine for the past 7 years. It doesn't require registration, is rock solid, and does everything that I need it to do as well as XP or better, including software development and gaming.
I'll update from 2K when my disk and all the backups rot (must remember to take another), or I absolutely need hardware that absolutely won't support 2K. Until then, as far as I'm concerned, Microsoft peaked 7 years ago, and it's been all downhill from there.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Vista is basically a rewrite of old code that was used in Win98, Win2K, and XP. Those that use these utilities will be open to security risks and software redundancies. TweakXP can do similar things to what is described in the article, but XP is XP, and it cannot be Vista. As much as people say MSFT cannot code worth a dime, it can do better than a LOT of utilities out there.
Why would I want to emulate slow? The only reason I want to stay with XP is the lack of CRAP that comes with and overruns the Vista experience.
Vista? I can't even get SLI to work on XP Home. And that's SLI that was supposed to be preconfigured on the machine. Every time I call Mesh support about it they tell me the call is taking too long and hang up on me!
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
By the time you buy the new firewall sofware, Opus et al you'll have spent the equivalent of buying a Vista Ultimate license and just sitting on it until at least SP2.
Based on the Vista systems I've seen, the grandparent is perfectly serious. A friend of mine bought a shiny new laptop with Vista preinstalled, only to find that his hardware wasn't all supported.
Not a mention of the Vista Transformation Pack in the article?
The VTP makes XP look like Vista, doesn't slow down your computer, and is free. It includes several freeware apps such as a Sidebar, a Start Orb, etc. It is really polished the new version is supposed to be released Monday.
You can also get Vista games on XP.
And with KDE being ported to Windows with KDE 4, you'll also be able to get both Konqueror and Dolphin on XP if you want to try another file manager without shelling out $70.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I don't advise the non-technical to use Stardock. In fact, I recommend people avoid it until they clean it up a bit. There is a bevy of old and new code in there which makes for a confusing (and unstable) product. The installation/maintenance process is utterly terrible.
Their support leaves one hanging; the product kept crashing, and I never resolved it.
Give them some time, they're growing and partnering with Microsoft. Try the product once it's really ready for prime time, which may be a while yet.
FUD.
.NET Framework 1.1.
You do not need drivers for your mouse or monitor to work in Vista or XP for that matter. Drivers may allow some additional functionality, but nothing that I've ever seen to be necessary in either OS.
I've installed vista on numerous PCs, at home, in the office and on an old Lenovo R50e. I've not had hardware conflicts, I've not experienced instability, and the only showstopping incompatibility I've experienced is ironically with MS' own
I've managed to find drivers for every card and peripheral except an older Soundblaster.
SLi is supported (and activated) on the chipset at boot time, not at the OS level; The driver does control it, however. A good few users have claimed a large increase in graphics speed going back to XP from Vista, mainly due to the fact that DX9 rendering in Vista is (supposedly) slower than DX10 rendering.
Not that SLi provides much of a performance increase for what you're spending, anyway. nVidia chips are faster per-card, but the truly great scalers are the ATi cards, whose Radeons (and Radeon HDs) offer more performance per extra card in Crossfire than the GeForces in SLi, though each card is less powerful.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
Is that both of those games are DX9! We still don't have any DX10 goodness (save for the Lost Planet DX 10 Demo and Company of Heroes if the patch came out)
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
why don't you just pay the upgrade fee and get a complete, well-tested package instead of a bunch of disjoint shareware utilities?
Because the well tested upgrades cost nothing:
In the free software world there are no "disjoint" utilities because everyone can share their libraries and common routines in ways no two commercial applications ever can. "Smooth" and "unified" begin with freedom.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah sure you did.
Tell me how your DirectX 10 benchmarks worked out!
"You do not need drivers for your mouse or monitor to work in Vista or XP for that matter."
O RLY!?
Try writing an OS kernel and NOT including drivers for keyboard or VGA, and see how it works.
Generic driver == no driver?
Not to mention, this is a hell of alot of software, I mean, he's talking about installing several toys that will run 24/7 and of course this is gonna sap your processing power, and its not integrated, so it'll probably end up using more resources than vista.
Vista is running all sorts of DRM on top of it's not very efficient or thrilling UI. The cost of adding a few skins is going to be less than that. Yahoo widgets along give the user a clock, weather and that kind of thing, without any performance hit.
But really, the further you get away from M$ the better your computing gets. The real upgrades are free. Most of the visual elements have been available in the nix world for decades. The performance gain of moving to GNU/Linux is incredible and it can be had for less than 2GB of system files that auto configure and run live off a 650MB boot CD. Why buy car tweaks or a new car when you could just download a space ship for free?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you're going to waste your time, you may as well make it fun.
/ Themes/FlyakiteOSX.shtml
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
The word "re-educate" in that context makes you sound like a fucking idiot.
The captcha is "frauds."
By my count, this is the seventh time that this has been re-posted. Good lord man, you have made your point. Besides, this article isn't even about Linux. But, I guess you can't resist any opportunity to re-make, and re-make, and re-make, the same quake on linux point. Geez, we get it already.
Does msft pay for message board shills?
...because when I install XP, the first thing I do to pimp it out is turn off all the Fischer Price stuff in order to make it look more like Windows 2000.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I dual boot debian and w2k. W2K is fast, secure, reliable, runs all my hw and sw, and has none of that authentication cr@p. Why people would bother with XP, much less Vista, is beyond me. Do people like bloat, or a fisher-price interface, or the authentication nightmare, or having to learn a new UI, or just giving msft more money?
I dunno, maybe it's just gamers?
No offense to the author, but the linked article is barely informative. I don't even know how this made it to the front page. But
the subject is interesting, as there is a bunch of cool freeware software to make XP be like (or even better than) Vista. You
don't need to spend a single dollar. So this is my real list of programs to Pimp your XP:
1. Lauchy: www.launchy.com
Some may say that this is the poor man's QuickSilver. Maybe it is, but in the Windows world there are few programs as useful as
Launchy. Install it and you won't need to access your start menu anymore.
2. Quizo's Explorer toolbars: http://quizo.at.infoseek.co.jp/freeware/indexEn.ht ml
These are 2 free toolbars that make Windows Explorer as good as Directory Opus (IMHO) for free:
* QTTabBar: Adds firefox-style tabs to windows explorer. It also adds a cool incremental search feature, and a customizable
toolbar where you can add folder shortcuts, etc
* QTAddressBar: Explorer breadcrumbs!
3. FileBox eXtender: http://www.hyperionics.com/files/index.asp
This is one of the most useful little pieces of software that I've used. I adds 2 buttons to the title bar of every windows dialog
and of every windows explorer window. One button gives you access to your "favorite folders" (which you can easily change) and the
other one gives you access to your "folder history". With these, going back and forth between folders to open or save files
becomes a snap. The only problem is that the default button icons a kind of ugly, but they can be easily changed.
4. Findexer: http://tomseffect.com/
Substitutes the windows explorer sidebar for a place where you can put links to your preferred folders. If you use FileBox
eXtender (see above) this might not be as useful, but I still like to use it.
5. TaskBar Shuffle: http://www.freewebs.com/nerdcave/taskbarshuffle.ht m
Another really useful program. With it you can reorder the window buttons in the windows taskbar. It can even automatically group
windows from the same program without collapsing them. You can also reorder the tray icons in the system tray.
6. Free Launch Bar: http://www.freelaunchbar.com/
Make the windows Quick Launch bar much more useful with this free replacement. It adds the ability to have folders inside the
quick launch bar, and have shortcuts within those folders.
7. LClock: http://www.softpedia.com/get/Desktop-Enhancements/ Clocks-Time-Management/LClock.shtml
A nice replacement to the windows clock in the system tray. It looks much better and is more useful as it shows a calendar when
you click on it. But the reason I recommend it is that it can also hide or reduce the size of the start menu button! Once you
start using Launchy (see above) you will not use the start menu very often, so I like to recover the taskbar real state that it
uses unnecessarily. To do so, with LClock you can reduce it by substituting the start menu image with a much smaller one.
8. MenuApp: http://www.freewaregenius.com/2006/11/02/menuapp/
Customize the explorer context menu with this tool. It comes with a lot of built-in actions, such as Command Prompt here, Create a
Folder, copy filename to path, etc.
There are other tools that you can use, but which I personally don't (although I've tried or used them in the past):
1. RocketDock: http://www.punksoftware.com/rocketdoc
From the sound of the article he doesn't run any programs that come with Ubuntu. He runs OS X. That being said, neither Ubuntu nor OS X has nearly the resource hogging apps running on an initial boot, so there's little reason to disable anything. I can't tell you how many requests I've been getting in my IT office for Mac's, mainly from people who are up for upgrades and have heard people bitching and moaning about Vista but loving their Macs. Mind you, most of these people already run Linux on a second or third PC, so that's already a taken option. It's just Vista, it's chasing people away.
This is actually a fairly old troll with some of the words changed. People on Slashdot get trolled too easily sometimes :(
Comodo Firewall is free, and it is to me the best software firewall for windows XP.
Explorer Breadcrumbs is also free.
Stardock is unnecesary eye-candy (I used it before but the only thing it really does is impress friends, and that only once).
It seems you have drank the MS Vista Koolaid.
What about software incompatibilities in Vista?
Slower games performance in Vista?
That XP is adecuate enough and much better supported by all vendors?
That if I want to buy brand new hardware with a brand new OS I would prefer a Mac (and put XP, and only XP, if I need some windows software in it)?
Those are much better reasons for not to upgrade to Vista U_U
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
I'm not sure what the problem was with your install, but it's miles faster than installing XP, as in 15 minutes opposed to 35.
Security
"....the new security measures, specifically User Account Controls."
UAC is useless and annoying. It might be fine for my Aunt Mildred, who only turns her computer on a couple of times a week to surf the web for a few minutes and send one or two e-mails, but for anyone who actually want to get things done, Vista is virtually unusable unless you turn off UAC. In the long run, UAC will make things worse because clueless users, who have absolutely no idea whether foobar.exe is a legit program or malware, will simply start clicking 'Yes' to everything.
Windows Explorer
"Windows explorer featured several significant upgrades in Vista."
WTF? Numerous features in the XP version of Windows Explorer have been removed or changed in ways that make them less useful. Customize the toolbar? Gone. In fact the whole Toolbar is gone. Status bar shows total size of all the files in a directory? XP yes. Vista no. The list goes on.
Search
"Windows Vista's integrated desktop search is one of my favourite new features"
Purely a personal preference, Desktop search is meaningless to me. I have thousands of files in dozens of directories and rarely need to use search to find them. In all fairness, XP's search is so horrible and less than useless, that anything will seem better.
Look and feel
Look - don't care.
Feel - Vista feels slow and clunky on a 2.2ghz Athlon XP with 2 gig of RAM. It only feels slightly better on my new dual-core 2.8ghz machine with 4 gig RAM.
Media Center and Games
Vista doesn't really do anything that's better than XP. And that's the real problem with Vista. People have long knocked XP as nothing more than a fancied up Windows 2000. And there's some truth to that. But, everyone forgets that when XP first came out, most people were running Windows 95/98 -- quite possibly the two worst pieces of crap software ever created. XP represented a major improvement. Vista, in many ways, is a giant step backwards.
I always think it's funny when sites that are trying to show off style in Windows put up something Apple related in a screenshot or photo. Even though some people bash it, it looks like some people like to draft behind the reality distortion field, the iPod halo effect, or whatever negatively connoted word is being associated with successful design and marketing.
...do yourself a favour and buy a Mac.
you had me at #!
Enter "WhereIsIt" into Google to find out more... To find out more, or download a trial version, enter object desktop into Google... Google search for "desktop sidebar" to find out more... Set Google hunting for "media portal" or "Yahoo Go for TV"; to find out more... Again, do a quick Google search on the program that interests you the most to find out more...So there you have it...
Screw Microsoft. This guy's pimping Google.
What?
Vista is just VERY BLOATED eye candy, don't see any reason to switch from XP.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Research shows that most pimps live with their mothers in order to pay the rent. They also fail quickly if they mess with the merchandise. The ghetto worship that leads to this terminology has everything backwards.
you a bot or a lifeless nerd addicted to the copy & paste?
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
It's so bad, they even wanted to find a UAC for XP. *shudder*
I read this back when it was in the firehose, and there isn't even one piece of software on there I'd install if they were giving it away, either.
worldwide it comes to approximately 3100 copies a day per country. not remarkable.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The captcha is "tabular."
1. Download theme (optional)
2. Remove half your ram.
3. Clock the CPU down by about 20%.
Where's the big deal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
...you have or want to work with programs from Adobe's CS3 suite. They run only on XP. I was faithful to my Win2k machine until about two months ago when I decided they "got me".
Try running XP without installing video drivers, try scrolling around in any window (browser or document), it will lag stupidly. Not having lag seems pretty necessary to me, but maybe i'm just spreading more of that FUD.
#define true false
What he's stated is false. Linux is ready for your desktop and more. It is a cool operating system that is extremely stable and outstandingly developed. It is perfect for anything you want to do with it including some gaming. Quake 3 and 4 have native clients if you want to play them but there are other games out there too.
The issue with a lack of games isn't a big deal for 90% of the average Joes out there. It is only the gamer/enthusiast that expects gaming support from their rigs.
If you are an average Joe you can quite easily install Linux and use it without one word being typed in the terminal or at any sort of character prompt. You can, if you want. That's the beauty of Linux. You can do it if you want to. You aren't required though. Sometimes it is just easier to type a command. If you aren't good at typing you won't be doing much forum posting, chatting, or emails either. I know, the command structure can be archaic. But if you don't understand them then just use the graphical equivalents.
What he's pointing out is one flaw that I do agree with. A universal applications distro installer is highly important and it must operate offline.
Gaming is an issue but the major problem has to do with the monopoly powers that be. They have locked you into direct x so you can't play on other platforms. If developers were smart they'd be developing for OpenGL. But considering that Microsoft discontinued OpenGL in Vista and that they own a good number of game development houses you can begin to see how they are using their monopoly to use directx to be a locking mechanism to keep you on their OS platform.
Essentially, nothing this guys says is really valid. He is exaggerating problems of 2 years ago--exaggerations then, they are super exaggerations now.
He'll never know. He'll never understand that Windows, even Vista, is a drm nightmare and Microsoft's own spyware is a huge violation of your privacy.
Linux can be configured to your hearts content. It is a great OS that does what you want. It doesn't cost an arm and a leg and can be made to look beautiful while operating fantastically.
That's the truth and I used to be someone that complained about everything in Linux. Now I see the Linux industry listened and fix most of my concerns.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I don't know what makes this funnier, the fact that linux has hovered around 3% market share for a long time, or the fact that you don't know the difference between greater-than and less-than.
Either way I think I've found your problem with using linux: you're a moron.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Mark Shuttleworth estimates that there are 20 million Ubuntu users. If I recall Fedora Core 6 had 1 million downloads in under a week. They are on Fedora 7 now.
The other distributions are known to have sizable numbers also. Worldwide there's estimated to be over 100 million installs. That is a significant number of installations and users. Of course this covers desktop an servers. This does not count the number of devices with the OS embedded.
So, when you state how low a percentage Linux has you really should consider that percentage adds up to a serious number of users worldwide.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
If you want it to look lke Vista then buy the damn thing. Really, WFT?!? On the other hand, there are plenty of small, single-use apps out there that enhance XP interface without hogging a vast amount of resources. For exampe, those who prefer the keyboard might like to take a look at Launchy http://www.launchy.net/
"All you need to run Vista happily is an Intel quad-core overclocked to 4GHz, 4Gb RAM and twin nVidia 8800 GTX video cards."
Great!! So we should all upgrade to Vista next summer?
Huh, this seems familiar, seems like with every Windows OS there's a bunch of groaning about the system requirements when it's first released, then a year later everyone eventually upgrades and everyone's happy.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
And keep dreaming if you want that in a notebook PC! Because you're also going to need a 2 foot diameter fan, and a heat sink the size of the original Apple ][, in order to cool all that stuff off so it doesn't melt within two hours of use!
how you can improve Windows XP to mimic and even surpass Vista
I think you have that backwards. You don't have to do anything to get XP to "surpass" Vista. It retroactively surpassed it when Vista was released.
"Just lately?!" Seriously?! WTF?! Just about every real geek knows that we've been comparing and criticizing each other's operating systems pretty much since the dawn of the computer age! And anyone that denies it should turn in their geek card immediately!
What "DRM" is that again? I seem to be able to play all my media without any trouble at all.
That's a nice value judgement. That is your opinion, correct?
Oh, LOL.
This sounds thrilling, but you need to clarify it if you're going to use it as a bullet point. What visual elements have been available "for decades"?
Really? I find a fully loaded KDE desktop that sort of begins to mimic OS X or Vista (and frankly not that well) to be very computationally intensive. Do you contend otherwise? Of course XFCE and other options make that better, but then of course it's up to you what you want to give up for the "pretty" experience. So this "performance gain" you talk about is really very subjective, isn't it?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Because of virtualization.
Windows 2k runs MUCH better in Parallels or VMware than XP does- there is not the hint of sluggishness. Plus it does not require activation (great for having many different virtual machines on the same system) and it works with almost every application that XP does (cept for some things you don't want to virtualize like games).
Every since I got my Macbook, my Windows 2000 disk has been one of my prized possetions. I imagine because of advantages in Parallels I will see my last XP desktop before I see my last Windows 2k one....
Open Source Sushi
You can add a real core operating system to XP as long as that operating system has a PC virtualizer. The cost of doing this is less than an anti-virus package. As a bonus you can move your browsing outside of Windows and reduce the fragility of the XP environment even further.
- same XP -
- new virtualizer -
- new OS -
- same PC -
Spending any time or money in any other way is a complete waste of time. You are not going to fix Microsoft's technical problems for them. Face the fact that they failed "OS level security" and now make one great big app called Windows that has many third-party plug-ins. If it crashes, it's an app. Put it in a window and recover that PC.
"The security aspect of things really hasn't changed much" - by Runefox (905204) on Saturday June 23, @11:36AM (#19620095)
5 996#post365996
i ntsCISToolResult84735.jpg
Check this out:
http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=36
& the score it gains on CIS Tool 1.x:
http://img.techpowerup.org/070618/APK14SecurityPo
It can & DOES far surpass VISTA's score "oem/out-of-the-box-stock" as it is setup by MS, & yes, even patched... with about 1 hour's worth of work on an experienced user's part!
Even Linux folks agreed with me (god forbid, lol), that my 14 points for securing Windows (has one small omission, the use of regedit.exe, part of CIS Tool's suggestions) works, here:
http://linux.sys-con.com/read/382946_f.htm
And, when I challenged ANYONE there to exceed my score using CIS Tool 1.x (84.735)!
It appears that nobody tried to (or possibly they did, but could not. I say that, because many suggested BSD instead. So, that said? I posted in the BSD post there the other day (PC-BSD related, here @ slashdot, by arstechnica news reporters)!
Yet again, the same challenge to slashdotters - NO takers, again! Evasions? POSSIBLY!
- or, possibly they don't care about security online!
(OR, that my post was buried in the deluge of posts here @ slashdot (imo @ least, the boards here are difficult to see all users points/posts imo, the only weakness here: The posters that come here though, like Bruce Perens, John Carmack (& others I RESPECT IMMENSELY for their accomplishments though)))
Anyhow/anyways - nobody taking my challenge or beating my score from the *NIX world on a test that runs on ALL platforms (thus, it is the "scientific method of control", the same test on all systems OS types this tool runs on)?
This only shows myself, & the planet, that all this "Windows is less secure than *NIX" is pure b.s., & all of them (yes, even BSD derivants like MacOS X etc. et al) out of the box stock, have holes or room for improvements (especially in terms of security & holes/vulnerabilities).
Still, anyone care to download & try CIS Tool 1.x (from the CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY), & exceed my score in the graphic above (84.735) from the *NIX world?
Here is its download (it is MULTI-PLATFORM, & runs on BSD (no MacOS X version though sorry), Linux, Solaris, & Windows):
http://www.cisecurity.org/index.html
Go for it, & good luck!
(I hope you *NIX (or windows guys too) CAN exceed my score, because I will ask how, & attempt to emulate this on Windows Server 2003 SP #2 fully patched, to get even stronger IF it is doable... &, we ALL can learn/grow & GAIN by such a test!)
Thanks!
APK
P.S.=> I can be reached @ apk4776239@hotmail.com in regards to your scores, if you do not have the ability to post your CIS Tool 1.x score & we can discuss your scores... everyone gains this way! apk
Smooth and unified like the clipboard?
What do you mean? My clipboard not only works between applications of all sorts, it works across the network as if the application was running locally.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
So wtf is so hard about > ("ampersand+gt+semi-colon") or < ("ampersand+lt+semi-colon") - even if he's trolling, he could still at least code in the proper fucking characters...
*SIGH* All right, I guess I'll try again.
.inf file and modify it manually. I realize this is a pain, but it isn't actually difficult once you know how. My point here is, virtually any driver for XP will also work on Vista. I've found exactly one device that did not work as expected after I loaded its driver installer using Compatibility mode. It was a horrendously bizarre one-off brand from Malaysia, plus it was designed for Windows 2000/XP SP0 and wasn't plug-and-play even on XP. It was a WiFi driver that paid no respect to the WiFi networking stack and worked like crap even in XP. You know what? It still almost worked in Vista... and the last time I tred was on a pre-release version.
"An idiot check" - I take it this means your one of the idiot masses who run every program as an Administrator, and don't understand why every single other major OS in the world doesn't (by default). Perhaps you are also one of those fools who boast that you've never had a malware infection and therefore XP is, in fact, secure? For goodness sake... I stopped using XP explicitly because it was such a pain to run as a non-admin; until Vista betas were day-to-day usable I ran Linux exclusively and I still dual-boot.
"Even less compatibility" - You know, this one I find somewhere between funny and WTF. Pretty much anybody can name one or two programs or devices that have issues on Vista, but in essentially every case I've found it was due to simply bad design. If you rely on crap like that, I'm sorry you locked yourself in but there are still a few things you can try.
Software: Run in Compatibility Mode and if necessary, run as Administrator. For example, the vast majority of Vista's "incompatible" software (most of which will actually run if you really care to) does idiotic shit like placing the user-level data in the installation folder (which is supposed to be read-only to user-level permissions) or similar stupidity. Usually this can be made to work by modifying the permissions on the program's data files, or by running it as an Admin. A few programs truly don't work, but I have actually found that Vista has better backward compatibility with some of my programs than XP did (pre-XP programs, obviously).
Hardware: if the manufacturer hasn't produced a driver yet, then frankly they suck, but there are ways around even that issue (perfected during months of running pre-release Vista when drivers really WERE hard to find; nowadays everybody has them, near enough). If the driver installer for 2003, XP, 2000, or NT (in that order of preference) is available as an executable, set the executable's Compatibility Mode to the expected version of Windows and try running it. More than 90% of the time this worked without a hitch for me. For those few places it didn't find or extract the
16-bit: Ok, now you've crossed the line from bullshitting into trolling. NO 64-bit version of Windows will run 16-bit apps (that includes XP and 2003, in case you were wondering) and 32-bit Vista runs them perfectly well; at least as compatibly as 32-bit XP (moreso in the case of one of my programs). Honestly, if your post hadn't been moderated so high I'd have given up in disgust when I read that part... you obviosuly not only haven't used Vista, you've believed the worst of everything you heard about it without even attempting to verify anything.
"Security aspect... hasn't changed much" - Are you fucking insane? IE7 with Protected Mode is actually fairly close to Firefox 2 on Secunia, although it is not, at present, as good (in the past, it has sometimes rated higher). Vista includes a bi-directional firewall, far better than the POS that comes with XP. Vista uses Address Space Layout Randomization, making buffer overflow attacks far more difficult in any software, first- or third-party. Vista integrated Defender, whih while not an anti-virus is nonetheless a very useful tool and the only reputable anti-spyware program with a real-time scanner that is available free. There's more, but those are probably the big ones. Don
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Wherever I go, there's M$ defender dedazo. Every hour of the day, seven days a week. What a drag. The only thing worse, of course, would be if I actually was dedazo. This time, he wants to compare X to Vista and declare Vista more efficient, wowzer.
What "DRM" is that again? I seem to be able to play all my media without any trouble at all.
This is a different issue, but it is part of the user experience so I'll deal with it. Most audiophiles would disagree with you when they find out that Vista disables their spdif outputs. What I was really talking about though, was the waste of resources the checking of "trip bits" represents. There's a lot of stuff like that in Vista that will never hamper free software. You can also add anti-virus, file indexing, poor memory management, driver that can't share code and other bloat to the list of performance robbing junk on Windoze. Once again, these are different issues and should not be confused with the interface.
I find a fully loaded KDE desktop that sort of begins to mimic OS X or Vista (and frankly not that well) to be very computationally intensive. Do you contend otherwise? Of course XFCE and other options make that better, but then of course it's up to you what you want to give up for the "pretty" experience.
Yes, I'll say otherwise. I've run a "fully loaded" KDE interface on a 233 MHz PII. It was a little slow for my taste, so I run E16 instead, which is prettier, has transparency, multiple desktops, excellent pagers and very good speed even on modest hardware. Yeah, it did movies and all that. I also run the parts of KDE I like, such as the kicker, universal sidebar, konqueror, kate, kontact and other bits and pieces where KDE is really the best available. My fastest machine is still a six year old 1.2 GHz Athlon. I do movie editing on it, but my wife does most of that for us on an 800 MHz PIII. One day, I might upgrade because the newer processors are that much better at number crunching, but I think I'll wait until some piece of hardware actually dies.
The only advantage Vista has is accelerated drivers, which are a must for gamers. This drives them to Intel, or non free nvidia and ATI drivers.
My subjective view of the overall Vista experience comes from a visit I made to CompUSA today. There, against the back wall was a line of M$'s finest display. Even to someone bound in the 1995esque eXPerience, the display was a dissapointment. First off, it was jerky. It's just a movie and should have flown smoothly but it jerked every second or so. The flying toaster people did better fifteen years ago. Second, what it showed looked like a dud. There was limited transparency, a bazillion flying windows, dual desktops, and video conferencing. E16 has better transparency and E17 offers animated desktops. The flying windows looks about as good a way to organize your data as throwing our papers into the air and I far prefer the multiple desktops of X which are best done by E16. Dual displays are something that KDE and others have mastered that I will occasionally yearn for, but never enough to actually install a second or third or fourth PCI card. Video conferencing is the most interesting thing, not because it's hard to do, but because they might finally deliver on what they have been unable to do well for the last seven years of NetMeeting. XP users may finally reap some of the rewards of the M$ monopoly and the ass pain M$ has made of USB cameras, when they move to Vista. It won't last long because ATT and other greed heads are busy setting up their networks to block anything but their own pay per byte VOIP but XP users don't know it. Otherwise, I saw absolutely nothing that would tempt the average XP user. The performance hit, hardware costs and cost of replacing software and other stuff broken by Vista add up to one very large negative. That might explain why I was the only person in the store looking at computers.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A feature I found useful when using macs is the ability to give folder and file names a colored background for better recognition, does anyone happen to know if there's any software that does that for windows?
Just because you were lucky, it isn't FUD. I saw Vista choking on network card and I saw Vista freezing on playing a DVD.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
At least vista is a known quantity, which *will* sooner or later be supported by software vendors as a platform...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
From that site...
"As a fitting start to this blog, I'm proud to release a preview of our Alky compatibility libraries for Microsoft DirectX 10 enabled games. These libraries allow the use of DirectX 10 games on platforms other than Windows Vista, and increase hardware compatibility even on Vista, by compiling Geometry Shaders down to native machine code for execution where hardware isn't capable of running it. No longer will you have to upgrade your OS and video card(s) to play the latest games.
The current preview allows you to run a number of examples from the Microsoft DirectX SDK on Windows XP. They're not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but we want to whet your appetite."
Actually, I think it negates the post. Irony is beautiful.
Do people actually write in HTML? - I don't!
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
The cost to "Vistafi" Windows XP, using the numbers quoted in the article, for 1 year, would be $199.84. After 1 year, you'd have to pay an additional $39.95 for the "Outpost" component. As one would already havea Windows XP license, they would be eligible for the upgrade pricing to Windows Vista. Directly from Microsoft, Windows Vista Home Premium costs $159.95, Windows Vista Business costs $199.95, and Windows Vista Ultimate costs $259.95. It would make much more sense for the user to save $39.89 and buy Windows Vista Home Premium, pay an extra 11 cents and buy Windows Vista Business, or pay an extra $39.89 for Windows Vista Ultimate, which they'd recoup the cost of within one year by a margin of 6 cents, by not needing to resubscribe to "Outpost."
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
*Slaps keyboard*
What part of "Turn Off Computer" didn't you understand, bitch?
I have a fully licensed copy of Win2K Pro that I have faithfully moved from machine to machine for the past 7 years. It doesn't require registration, is rock solid, and does everything that I need it to do as well as XP or better, including software development and gaming.
You would probably quite like Win2k3 as well - If you have a chance to pick up a copy, I recommend it.
It has all the speed and tightness of Win2k, with the much-improved hardware support of XP, without XP's bloat (it even defaults to having themes turned off!).
Unfortunately, you may find a few programs that refuse to run (for no good reason) on a "server" OS unless you buy a "server" version, whatever the hell that means. As the most annoying, I currently don't know of any free ondemand AV programs that will run on 2k3 (AVG used to, but the new version refuses).
www.launchy.net is correct, .com is a domain squatter
the fact that you don't know the difference between greater-than and less-than
Could be time for a code review...
-- Posted from my parent's basement
And -- blissful silence. Take that, Acrobat Reader update manager!
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
God, what a lame article. Those "pimp" options are years old and *so* take down your system performance that you may as well buy Vista since it's cheaper for the same "5 year old girl playing dress up" OS.
[I switch back and forth between Windows, OSX, and Ubuntu all day long (about evenly split). I've used each operating system since they've existed (and about every distro of Linux).]
I kid, I kid.
You just spent all that time responding to a (clearly offtopic) cut-and-paste troll.
Whether or not he believes what he actually posted (he probably didn't even write it) is irrelevant; most trolls are only done to get a response. Which you wasted your time doing.
Manufacturers make their own DVD-ROM drivers?!
HP own VooDoo and put their own drive in. The lightscribe driver seems to be buggy.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I'm the original author of the article Thanks for everyone's comments, I was also surprised to find Slashdot had linked to my article, although I am quite proud of the article there are lots of authors on the internet all wanting their share of the spotlight so it was still a pleasant surprise. I appreciate all comments and criticisms, let me say though I'm not affiliated with any of the software vendors in the article. The only thing I'm affiliated with is my website that I mention in my signature. Those of you who said that buying all the software I recommended would push the cost beyond that of buying Vista are correct. The point is Vista just doesn't work well for me and lots of other people out there. Every time I want to play a Game or watch a DVD (Using Nvidia's excellent Purevideo codec, no I'm not affiliated with them either) I have to reboot to XP, so I'd rather just stay in XP thank-you-very-much. You don't >have to buy everything I recommended, just the bits that give you the functionality you want. I could have also mentioned Truecrypt (free) and PGP disk (commercial) as an alternative to Bitlocker. I do like to recommend free alternatives whenever I can as there is some fantastic software out there and thanks to those who have recommended free alternatives to the commercial software I mentioned in the article, I will certainly check those out. I do run all the software I mentioned on my PC (AMD 4800 dual core 2gb RAM) and find it runs just as responsively as my Vista installation. I also run an old 1ghz Transmeta tablet PC, needless to say I don't run all that software on there! If your PC's an older model then your not likely to want flashy skinning software in Vista or XP flavours, that is just common sense. Oh, I'm not affiliated with Google either, Ezineartiles have an annoying policy of only allowing about half a dozen links in each article, which is why I had to tell people to go off and search for some of the software. thanks again for all your comments!
I wish I could agree with this completely, but I've had a lot of trouble with my Ubuntu installation, I can't get my monitor to run at 1600x1200, my second monitor just displays garbage and last time I updated I had to use a boot CD to manually edit my GRUB configuration because the update manager had overwritten it. I wish the Linux community would spend less time bashing Windows and more time making Linux into a Windows beating OS, because Microsoft certainly need more competition.
when I have something negative to say about Linux - which is not often - at least I speak out of personal knowledge. Might want to try that instead of "last time I asked someone". Makes you look less stupid.
Great.
Now, I've told you from personal experience that clipboards work great locally and through the network by secure shell forwarding. Can you tell me anything at all about the Windoze clipboard?
If not, I might have to conclude you are here to do nothing but harass people
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And you, sir, are a big part of what's keeping me on windows. I've tried various linux distros, I actually prefer linux to windows, but the main problem with linux is you have to rely on the userbase for support and updates and evidently a lot of the userbase doesn't have the best grip on reality. In my experience a lot of the userbase are elitists who will gladly spend ages preaching about how great linux is to everybody whether or not linux is the best OS for them, but they're not prepared to help out those who actually want to make the switch from windows to linux.
A decade is 10 years, 10 years ago the majority of PC users were on win 95 or win 3.1, decades is plural so that's at least 20 years, I'm only 22 years old so I don't know what was going on in the *nix world 20 years ago, but judging by the monochrome unix box sitting in my cupboard that's around as old as me there wasn't many visual elements available and since vista required a graphics card with more memory than the average PC had 10 years ago I'd be interested in finding out what visual elements that are new in vista were available over 20 years ago in *nix.
It's probably too late to be modded in this article, but if I do I'll probably get modded as a troll, but that's the dumbest comment I've seen modded insightful in a long time
"You could switch to Mac, or Linux, or BSD, and get a fancier GUI and a lot more security" - by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 23, @05:09PM (#19622837)
6 22485
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=240283&cid=19
All I have to say about that (how you can secure a Windows NT-based OS so well, that when I confronted Linux, & even SELinux folks on it, & BSD ones as well (slashdot & other sites?) Nobody would try to beat my score on CIS Tool 1.x (a tool that runs across Linux, BSD (no MacOS X test version though, sorry - another case of a ware out there for other systems, but not MacOS X), Solaris, & Windows)...
Anyhow/anyways - Well, that URL & it's data + proofs of my statements?
You read that, you judge.
APK
P.S.=> All OS' & many wares have vulnerabilities in them, by default in their setups alone (config), not just binaries exploits. It is up to the user running a system, OR adminning a network, to do the job of shoring up the defenses... heck, why is there SELinux? Because it needed it, & it is an ADD ON to Linux (kernel hooks really) to secure it more (not all Linux's have it available for them by default in their distros, or rather, tested on them, afaik)... think about it! apk
You guys are all missing the point. Vista 32 is a test platform for Aero. The real new product is Vista x64 which is the real future of Microsoft OS. 128GB of RAM, anyone? Microsoft has said publically that Vista will be the last 32 bit operating system they release. This is major due to the fact that anyone doing real business on a PC nowadays is going to run into the 4GB limit. Even Server 2003 Enterprise, the highest end (i think) Windows Server software only goes to 32 or 64GB, using some paging technique.
They are giving away Windows Sharepoint Services for free now, which means a network content management that integrates seamlessly and with single sign on to Office and Explorer. It's quite a step up from network shared folders...
On top of that, they are basically giving away SQL server in SQL Server Express 2005. Granted there are some limitations but get those two running on a home box with 128+GB of RAM and you have an instant video on demand server, etc etc. Everything is moving over to SQL, even the registry (the application/local user end anyway) is probably moving to SQL. Everything cool in OS X is coming to windows also.
Anyway, the big killer is going to be 64 bit computing. This is like the jump from 16 bit to 32 bit we made in the 90's (well, early 80's with the 386DX, but really the 486DX was the first with both 32 bit memory addressing and arithmetic unit). Yeah yeah, Alpha did it first, blah blah Itanium, IA64 blah blah I know. The new windows 64bit kernel is designed from the ground up to be portable to different architechtures. That means if Opteron wins, if Itanium/IA64 wins or x64 which is just an extension of x86 wins, it runs, your software runs, etc.
Anyway, I don't really care for Vista, or Windows for that matter, but they do matter in the marketplace and they aren't going away from the desktop and small/medium business server market anytime soon. But if you want Linux or Unix or whatever to really pull ahead, it's time to really push the 64 bit stuff to all the current people with Pentium D+ processors..
Cool! Amazing Toys.