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Olympic Committee Chooses XP Over Vista
Vinit writes "The popularity of Windows XP is still making things difficult for Vista. Now Vista has again suffered a major setback, with Lenovo (Olympic 2008' official sponsor) installing XP on it's machines to run the Olympic Games' vital PC-related tasks. Vista will only be used in internet lounges set up for athletes to use during the games."
At what point does an OS mature enough that it becomes "enough for general use"? Maybe XP is that mark.
okinawa japan
My employer took the decision to migrate from win2k to XP, and we will roll it out this fall. Vista was proposed but we do not consider it ready for use.
THe specialist software that it runs not yet being rewritten for vista- I'm sure it'd work on vista, but in an international event like this you really don't want to get things misbehaving or acting just slightly differently. Of course in 4 years time vista will be standard and they'll be no question of using anything else- or possibly using the next version of Windows.
Smart choice indeed. I for myself would have chosen Windows XP over Vista, because even though my personal choice is Linux, I will not force anyone on using it, whatsoever. My new laptop (issued by the new company I work) comes with Vista, and making my life a hell. I am going to install Linux on it if it won't hurt any company policy, as all I do is to develop Java applicatons and run some office work.
The popularity of Windows XP is still making things difficult for Vista.
I wouldn't blame the popularity of XP as much as I would blame the god-awfulness of Vista. At our organization, there are so many problems we've identified with Vista on our enterprise that we've declared a moratorium on its rollout...probably until SP1 is released (which, considering how late Vista was to begin with, could take a while).
In the meantime, I now get to blow Vista off all the new systems we purchase and replace it with XP. As if I didn't have enough work to keep me busy...
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
That is making things difficult for Vista. Vista is making things difficult for Vista.
Just about every day there are stories of how it can't do something important, or has some kind of security flaw, or won't work with this or that hardware, or needs even more system resources to even run.
What is making XP "popular" is that it doesn't have the problems Vista does. It is no advantage to XP. It's that Vista has so many faults. This isn't unlike the Microsoft even versions of DOS that sucked too.
And I wonder how hard MS will be trying to persuade them to reconsider. Wouldn't surprise me if in a few weeks time there is another article about how MS gave them a rather nice deal and they decided to reconsider their OS of choice.
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Yes, funny how all those anti-Vista stories on Slashdot now portray Windows XP as a popular OS that's loved by everyone. Before Vista, it was portrayed as pretty much the most hated system on the planet.
The truth is that in the end it is still a choice between MS and MS.
The same happens with detergents- that's why Unilever and Proctor&Gamble produce a multitude of detergents. If a sufficiently large group of people have a choice between 3 detergents of the same price & quality, and 2 are Unilever, it is likely that around 2/3 of the sold detergent will be Unilever.
In this case, anything non-MS was out of the picture, so why would they complain?
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Lenevo is choosing to go with an older, well-established OS that's tried and tested for the "mission critical" stuff rather than a newer, less tested one. So what?
Is anybody surprised at that? Would you do things differently?
When you have to look after everything from press accreditation to publishing results, from scheduling to putting up the correct names of competitors, and doing it all in a multitude of languages and to the tightest of schedules, what would Windows Vista bring to the party that Windows XP wouldn't?
To use a car analogy, Windows XP has been around the block, been put through its paces, had its engine tuned and is humming nicely, whilst Windows Vista has barely had more than its tyres kicked in the dealer's forecourt. If you were taking a 5,000 mile road trip across a continent, which would you go with?
Why anybody would be surprised at this decision, or even see it as a failing of Windows Vista, is beyond me. If you're going to go with a Microsoft OS, then common sense makes Windows XP the obvious choice.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The dutch equivalent of "the consumerist" (de consumentenbond) recently started a program where consumers can send in their Vista-related problems, which they are going to urge Microsoft to fix or ask for money back (or perhaps, to give free copies of XP instead). To quote de consumentenbond (article in dutch, relevant part translated here):
"A power user will be able to solve most of the problems that Vista confronts him with, however the average consumer will run into serious trouble. The [operating] system contains so many mistakes that we want to investigate this in detail."
Furthermore, the article notes that "The consumentenbond dislikes the fact that new computers are delivered with the Vista operating system by default".
Yup, Vista seems to be doing great...
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I don't know what would be a reasonable expectation for Linux market share at consumer level in the year 2010. 3%? 6%? 12%?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why is this thread title named "Its not so difficult" instead of "It's not so difficult"?
It really isn't that difficult. Don't have a go at other people for something you can't get right yourself, and as someone said before, it's not a spelling problem but a grammar problem.
I'd love to moderate this up as "Funny", but I can't.
Be nice to people on the way up. You will meet them again on your way down!
the special olympics...
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
"a major setback"
Come on, really? Complete sensationalist bullshit. Why don't we keep it up and refer to these meaningless events as "the final nail in the coffin" or ones that "spell doom" or "darken the horizon" for Vista. In case you hadn't noticed, the money's all going to the same place.
I think I'll stop here.
kinda lame this makes fronpage news when more pressing issues in china like pollution during olympic games, human rights abuse and censorship by chineese takes back seat
'fraid not.
If you look at old maps and the like you can see the origin of the possessive form of nouns.
For example, off the South East coast of Ireland is an area called St George's Channel (named presumably by the English after their lightweight pseudo-saint) - but if you look at older maps you will see it marked as 'St George his Channel' meaning the channel of Saint George. Shorten that and you end up with St George's Channel.
Likewise Bob his computer. The dog its bone etc. Obviously there's a problem with Eve - but I presume this is because she wouldn't have been entitled to own anything at the time this ended up in the language.
So I think the GP is correct - though I'm sure some grammar super-Nazi will pull me up on this.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
TFSummary links to TFA:t ee_chooses_xp_over_vista.php
a -wireless-kept-off-core.html
http://www.pclaunches.com/software/olympic_commit
which just regurgitates the story from
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/080807-vist
Why not link directly to the source instead of some blogger collecting Adsense? Network World has got advertising too, of course, but at least they earned it by doing the work and researching a story instead of just plagiarising it like a Picquepaille.
And for fuck's sake "installing XP on it's machine".
"It's" == "It is". Possessive is "Its".
I don't remember the transition from 2000 to XP being this difficult. There were a few bumps, the usual driver follies but nothing like the problems plaguing Vista. I don't remember companies going with 2000 because XP caused so many problems.
If memory serves the transition from 2K to XP was actually pleasant...at least by comparison.
Having said that I don't doubt MSFT will get Vista straightened out. My beef with MSFT products is not with the quality (although some of you could argue that quite compellingly). To me it's always been about value. Not whether it works but if it's worth the money you're paying. Right now, for Vista, that answer is "no" for a lot of people.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I fail to see how this is a setback for Microsoft. They still get their license fees from XP (though this is China, you never know). More importantly, any time you see an athlete using a computer, or anyone using a private terminal, won't they be using Vista? I betcha any sponsorship the games get from Microsoft will be branded "sponsored by Microsoft Vista," not "sponsored by Microsoft Vista (but jokes on you guys we're really using XP for our back end stuff here at the games)"
You obviously didn't scroll down to the part of the page where it clearly says:
Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals.
No, it's not. Just read the very page you liked to refer. Or just ask your English Grammar teacher if there's a money-back-guarantee regarding his (no, not his') or her (no, also not her's) lessons.
Except...what's this? Don't use apostrophes for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals.
Apostrophes should not be used with possessive pronouns because possessive pronouns already show possession -- they don't need an apostrophe. His, her, its, my, yours, ours are all possessive pronouns. Next time try reading your own links.
Your brain is not a computer.
No point retraining the support people on Vista when I'm sure all the officials and athletes are still using XP.
No one cares about wasting user time, this is all about marketing and boosting Vista. Lenovo says Vista is too buggy to use and the athletes will have to put up with it anyway:
That's typical of a M$ partner, going along with a marketing push of a system they know is crap. M$ will claim the Olympics are "Vista Powered" and that's all you will see on the idiot box and cnn.com. Their CEO still hopes the upgrade treadmill will spur sales, though the overwhelming evidence is that vista is a failure. From the CEO Amelio interview:
When M$ dies and this kind of intentional waste ends. Computers will always ship bigger and better but forcing people to toss their old ones because of softare "upgrades" is evil. Free software will soon provide a smaller, but stable and steady market for good hardware that will be much better for the industry.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Vista is horrible, but Lenovo's CEO wants the upgrade treadmill to work. Athletes will have to put up with it and the public will be lead to believe Vista is what makes the Olympics work. If it's really going to work, the servers are going to use gnu/linux, BSD or something else that really does the job. I'm surprised that they admitted anything was not M$'s latest and greatest. The 2008 Olympics are going down in history like 1936, a zenith of the fake and evil.
The strategy is ultimately futile and damaging. Vista is more of the same from M$, and vendors who say otherwise damage their reputations and the industry as a whole. Vista is not selling and vendors are all suffering because of it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
tough I'm sure some grammar super-Nazi will pull me up on this.
Your speculative deduction is both logical and original, lacking only the minor detail of veracity. There are two common explanations for the usage you cite:
A) It was all a big mistake (technical term, "folk etymology") by Normans. The mess which is the usage of " 's " in English arises from the genitive case of Saxon, which was kinda-sorta adopted, but not consistently. So the fellow who wrote "St. George his Channel" on that map was a Norman who, completely confused by the Saxon name of the place as the locals pronounced it in their genitive case, wrote down the nearest sense he could make of it the way he spoke the language.
B) It was a deliberate attempt to disambiguate. Take the phrase "the King of England's forests". Grammatically, this is ambiguous, as it could mean either "the King of the forests of England" or "the forests of the King of England", and is only parseable because we know that forests and non-forests do not have separate Kings. (A good example of the kind of thing that bedevils natural language AI researchers.) This problem was more vexing in medieval times, when the name of a geographical region, "England" here, could mean either "the lands of the region of England" or "the political ruler of England", so "England's ships" for instance could mean either "the merchant marine crewed by Englishmen" or "the navy of the King of England", which could vary your meaning enormously. "England his ships", on the other hand, unambiguously means the King's navy, and was deliberately adopted for that reason. As the conflation of a region with its ruler died out as a grammatical construct, so did the need for this disambiguation, and thus the possessive case was readopted universally.
Take your pick.
Because it couldn't be consumers demanding faster, better systems in order to, say, play newer games and HD movies? It has to be Microsoft and their 'evil' business practices. You conveniently forget that Vista will run perfectly well on a 1GHz machine with 512 megs of RAM, because that would ruin your petty tirade, wouldn't it?
And don't regale me on the puniness of the system that you run Linux on - nobody cares, let alone consumers. It's the nature of humans to always want more out of what they buy.
Anyhow, you'd be surprised to learn that Microsoft doesn't actually have complete control of the upgrades market. Hardware manufacturers and games producers have much more say in that when they release bigger, faster, better versions of their particular products. Do you really think that id would have been content to release every version of Quake they made on the Doom engine?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
People who supposedly love Windows are the same people that claim their car never breaks down, yet they have their car up on blocks and are replacing the transmission. Or, they are the old people who hang around the water cooler at work and complain about their back pain and arthritis. I hear people in the break rooms at work complaining about their recent Microsoft breakdown and they just love commiserating with each other. It is a sick, sad phenomena that is passed of as people "loving" Windows?!?!
I believe it, but it sounds like the majority of complaints come from folks using legacy programs, 3rd-party solutions, and just a few comments ago, video drivers for fancy graphics/gaming cards. I would imagine that in Redmond most of your software is Microsoft, made (and tested) to work well with other Microsoft components -- in that controlled environment, I should hope that it went as smoothly as it did over there!
The moon may be smaller than the earth, but it's much farther away!
I wonder how much of the decision has to do with some practical issues with Vista "features." If they are hooking up equipment like timers and cameras, then the current state of Vista drivers could be a huge issue. I am definitely not a Microsoft basher, but anyone who views the situation objectively can see that there are issues of media content on Vista. A lot of Olympic workers probably move around media files. Have you ever tried to move around media files in Vista? It takes forever because of the DRM. And if they want to play their video out to a live video feed they may have to degrade its quality unless they are doing output that is certified as having proper DRM. In my opinion MS's biggest mistake in Vista was treating the recording industry as their best buddies and treating their customers as the enemy. They have managed to make Vista useless for media production or management.
The IOC was rather famously burned by widely-reported technological problems with IBM systems at the Atlanta games in 2006, with bugs that reported some athletes as being 7 or 8 meters tall. Near the end of the games, I recall there was a proclamation that the IOC would no longer adopt any technology that hadn't been in production for at least n years. This may simply be a case of Vista, being not even a year out of beta, not qualifying for consideration under this very conservative restraint.
MS tweaks their adoption numbers because it is not possible to buy XP licenses anymore. Instead, you buy Vista licenses and can use XP. So, I am sure for the MS marketing department and for their reporting it might look like Vista is doing great. They did this for XP to 2000 as well but not as aggressively as they did this time around.
Vista is not something we need at the business-level.