Slashdot Mirror
PC Magazine Editor Throws in the Towel on Vista
MacNN caught this incredible defection and loss of faith by a former Vista booster, PC Magazine editor-in-chief Jim Louderback, as he steps down from his position. "I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux."
A silly AC writes:
Apparently there are more people reading Distrowatch with Vista than they are with Debian, ... The ultimate irony here - Distrowatch.com. It just kills me.
Vista owners are looking for a new OS. Why does this confuse you? If Vista is as bad as Louderback says it is, gnu/linux is the only upgrade option that will work. Large numbers of Windoze users looking at a site like Distrowatch is bad news for M$ and good news for software freedom.
I guess all this nonsense about Vista being a flop is far from true.
Visit the Vista failure log and wake up. M$ can't push Vista. It's SP1 won't fix things and I doubt they can come up with a new OS people will really want. They have gone too far down the digital restrictions path to recover.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Perhaps the news is that, since this person is leaving his job at a magazine paid for by advertising, he is finally free to tell the truth.
This is not to say that Linux or OSX or anything else is perfect. The problem is that Vista was billed as 'all new' and 'rewritten from the ground up'. It wasn't. THAT is was sucks about it.
A-Bomb
...whatever MS comes up with. We are happily running our apps and games on 2003 server or XP. I support and use Linux in the server room, but in the real world with the apps and games all running on Windows, desktops will stay where they are.
People keep saying this is the year for the Linux desktop because of Vista's failures, when most people don't care because XP and 2003 run just fine for them. They aren't looking for change from Vista or Lunix or anything else for that matter.
The [allegedly] slow adoption of Vista is not due to DRM; it's because the OS is a resource hog.
Outside of that, I think it's silly to try and use overall numbers as a gauge of how successful it is as an operating system people LIKE. Vista's numbers are going to go up regardless, since almost all new PC's and laptops you buy will have Vista installed.
But it's clear that not everyone is happy with it. Check out a site like notebookreview.com, and notice how for almost every new laptop that has come out, there is invariably a thread or two about getting XP running on it.
It's forced me to make it my last Microsoft Operating System ever.
After being forced on to Vista by Sony - after unwittingly buying a VAIO which is stuck with Vista. I am totally fed up with it.
So far, I have found 3 features which are cool, and hundreds of issues.
Took me around 2 hours one day to edit the TNSNAMES.ORA file on my Oracle (dev) installation... until I worked out the trick.
My next Laptop will be OSX, next Workstation will be Linux - and I already run Linux (CentOS) servers.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
- a happy Vista user, for the record
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I've been waiting for stable drivers on a number of fronts and waiting for support from vendors like tivo and kensington. I don't dare upgrade to 64 bit, 32 is headache enough. WMP freezes for any video I load- have to use Nero showtime. iTunes 7 video is broken too. Everything else works great and I love the eye candy, but I give up.
If you'd bothered to read the article, it isn't all due to driver issues. He has problems also with the way they redesigned the network settings, how responsive the system is reconnecting to wireless after waking from sleep (if they do at all), as well as shared drives not being found by one computer on the network when a different one sees it just fine. His problems are with the UI, the networking protocols, as well as drivers. On brand new hardware, no less. It isn't like he was trying to support a P2 400 or something, brand new Dell workstations, which I'm sure had Vista Ready or even Vista Premium Ready stamped all over them. Vista has been out for more than 8 months now, and they still haven't worked out these annoyances and broken features. Vistas problems go well beyond drivers and into the realm of what others like to call here "defective by design".
today is spelling optional day.
"I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled!"
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking that Microsoft is a software company. That's wrong. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses software as a method of delivering abuse.
My opinion. Maybe even partly a joke, maybe not.
I feel his pain. Vista has been a pretty big headache for me since I first installed it earlier this summer. I still can't get the machine to suspend properly, my Bluetooth dongle sort of works, sometimes the network adapters require a reboot before they will connect...
However, quite a few problems have been fixed in the past few months, at least for me. The slow file copy/move thing seems to have disappeared; after a few driver updates, no more BSOD or random restarts. Program compatibility is still an issue, and I'm going to need to keep updating drivers, because everything seems like it could use a little more work. Really, though, there isn't much advantage over XP. I'm mainly staying with Vista for the better multiple-monitor support, and the 64-bitness (including finally seeing all 4 GB RAM).
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Vista has actually become usable for me over the last few months. I got a free evaluation copy a few days before the release, and it started out rather poorly. Sleep mode kinda worked, with the mouse, or networking, etc not coming back after it went to sleep. I got random reboots until ATI finally released a driver that didn't crash my whole system.
Now it's pretty smooth sailing.
With that said, I'm still considering just going to Ubuntu. Vista is OK I guess, but there's nothing in it that's terribly compelling. I like the look and feel of it, but I prefer all the software available a click away with Ubuntu. (I'm no newcomer to Linux, the Vista box is my last Windows machine). Whenever the next Ubuntu version comes out I'll try it out on the workstation and see if sleep mode actually works. Then just run vmware for the one or two remaining Windows apps I can't live without.
AccountKiller
And I love it. I've never been huge on Microsoft, ran OS/2 for several years, and Vista was just so annoying and slow, it made the decision to switch to a Mac easy. Is OS X perfect? No, but it is much better, and it didn't take more than a couple weeks to get fully comfortable in the new environment, although I still find myself hitting the ctrl key rather than the command key for some shortcuts.
... and just waited to publish it until he was leaving PCMag.
As Molly Ivins said: "Ya gotta dance with them what brung you."
Louderback's job was to keep his advertisers happy and I'm sure that was a big factor in how he chose to color his experience with Vista.
Not surprising.
-S
I had Vista Home Premium up for a total of FOUR DAYS before I went back to XP Pro. Vista has a lot of warts, even compared to the initial rollout of WIN95/98, and XP.
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
Wait for SP2 before wasting your time.
Yes. After SP2, you can waste your time much more efficiently.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The engineering computing* group at my company don't like Vista. I trust their opinion, thus I don't like vista.
-nB
* NOT IT, vastly different purposes in life. IT is about mainstream hardware, standard servers, only having to deploy 2-3 images across 90% of the company. Engineering Computing is about the other 10%. Almost as many images as users, custom hardware specs, support for *every* OS available, back to Win3.1 and across 17 different linux distros. If they say "no way" to Vista, then I'm sold on the opinion and won't touch it (incidentally, nor will IT for the same reason).
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
All I can say, he deserves what he got.
;)
If you pander to just one operating system, as a supposed computer professional, your simply not up to the job in the first place.
A true, passionate PC user (and by that, I mean Personal Computer User, NOT just windows), you owe it to yourself to be up to speed on as much as possible. You should have at your fingertips either virtual or full iterations of Windows, Linux and MacOS.
The name of this magazine is "PC Magazine", to me, that means "Personal Computer Magazine" - of course, we all know the reality is that it's 90% windows based. (A personal irritation of mine is assuming that a PC is a windows box - akin to calling computer criminals hackers)
That the ex-editor should declare using Linux unthinkable is unthinkable in itself.
Lets hope the new editor has a bit more savvy, not that I care, I don't read computer magazines anymore, now I know why...
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Thank you very much, but Linux doesn't need "friends" who use it as a Horrible Fate that they'll threaten to inflict on themselves as a way to get Mommy Microsoft's sympathetic attention.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Networking is not that important or useful these days so what the heck is the author crying about? ;-/
There obviously is little incentive for Microsoft to spend much time and effort in this area over the last 5 years of developing this "new" operating system.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You know we like to joke about signs of the apocalypse, but wow. I would almost look forward to that. Can you just imagine the Louderback articles we'd get with him on Linux?
vi v. emacs: The exciting new controversy
How to protect your children from The Gimp
Why won't anyone explain what GNU stands for?
However, it seems to me that it's likely that there are people who dislike Vista who've never even touched it, nor are informed about it. They dislike it because others, whose opinions they're willing to trust, do.
Tha'ts what viral marketing is all about ... trusted people influencing others. But it works both for you and against you.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
"As bad as Windows is, it works."
Well, apparently, it just doesn't work for everybody. Isn't that what the PC Magazine editor is saying in TFA?
I used to get PC Mag years ago, but stopped because I felt that the magazine was too biased in favor of MS.
I think all the big paper magazines around these parts have fallen for the same trap there. I gave up PC World, and later PC Pro, because their reviews of new versions of Windows, Office, etc. just seemed like sucking up to MS. That and the fact that in the latter case, they went to cover-DVD-only and more-or-less doubled the price, so I was paying more for a disc mostly full of junk and pretty much all of which I could just download if I wanted it than I was for a magazine that was half ads anyway. Oh, and the fact that most of their news stories were light on details, and those light details had been reported on the Internet weeks earlier.
The only point of still having magazines like this is if they can supply quality, in-depth reviews of products and industry analysis by people with the connections to find the material and the writing ability to report it well. If all they do is publish fluff reviews and sound-bite news, why on earth would I pay for that when I can read the same for free on-line?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
By general users, i'm talking about every day non-computer-techy types ... like my wife, my parents, my in laws, and brother. All of them use computers, but for little more than looking up general info like movies and wikis, email, some gaming and word processing. My mother is the prime example, she is the least computer literate, and when things suddenly "change" on the screen, she freaks out thinking that she broke something. While i've convinced her that a random popups window are OK (for passwords) .. the fact that the whole screen in vista flickers and the background changes (the password overlay) really gets to her. My brother, wife and i can't get out games to play correctly (video drivers for my nvidia 7800gs play games like halo 2 with horrible graphic glitchs, and even some lag in games like oblivion that i didn't have in XP, Medieval II crashed on me at least once an hour...). That's not even mentioning how vista itself seems to take up more memory which slows down the games. My father who is a minister, couldn't get some of his old files to work properly (which he needs for work). The new office (2007) actually messed more things up for him than fixed, and i had to install open office for him just to get some of his old files to OPEN so that he could then use them in 2007.
In the end... It's not that i hate windows, it's that it looks like vista was not thought out to be easier on/for the user... instead it looks like it was just planned look better on paper (BETTER SECURITY! BETTER NETWORKING! BETTER ETC!). Now add in the fact that we have to pay a TON of money just to get this stuff on our computers and it still doesn't work properly? For my parents, i actually installed (k)ubuntu for them about a month ago (KDE). They went to linux because they told ME they didn't want Vista anymore, but they didn't have money to spend on another set of MS licenses just to go back to XP. Go figure... after showing my mom for an hour how to open a browser, and open up gaim to chat and how to go into her home folder.... i've actually heard her complain LESS than when she had XP.
Allegedly? So are you saying that vista adoption is not slow?
Gotcha. So it's not selling slowly, but that's only because it's a resource hog. I guess MS have realised that what the consumer really wants is bloat, and that if they hadn't made the OS so greedy then no one would be buying it?
Or did you just mean that it is selling slowly, and that's because it does need too many resources, but that it's very rude of us to go around saying so. Perhaps you meant yes it's not selling, and yes it's bloated, but don't go around bad mouthing DRM?
The trouble is, really, that to pin Vista's woes (alleged, if you insist) on any single factor is probably a gross oversimplification. Vista's problems include patchy driver support, a confusing pricing scheme, the lack of any compelling "must-have" feature for the OS, the fact that a lot of people don't want to change from XP, dislike of the licence terms, fears of added expense in terms of new software and hardware that may be needed to run the damn thing.
The that fact that it's a resource hog isn't helping, either, and neither is the DRM (because like it or not, an awful lot of XP users also use P2P) and neither is the fact that it's had some scathing reviews, many of them from writers normally counted among the Redmond faithful.
Still, at least the resource problem will go away as machines get faster. I suppose if you had to pick a single cause that's the one that lets the OS still seem like a viable concern. Maybe sales will take off next year if and when XP really gets retired.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
If you say you have had no problems with it, then you really shouldn't start off your next sentence about a bug that's a show stopper for you and caused you to reinstall the previous OS.
So you are writing off Linux because ATi has delivered sub-par Linux drivers thus far? And your solution is Windows 2000? I won't even take the easy shot at Mandriva....
For a heavy Microsoft supporter, Macs are the unthinkable option - Linux is like the escape pod, cramped but familiar and you won't get as much merciless teasing from your compatriots.
P.S. - I too am a Linux supporter, and know "cramped" is a poor description of something that really is more free and liberating - but that's the intitial feeling Windows users get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've noticed something fairly consistent about the people I know who like Vista well enough to make it their primary OS:
They are the same people who have been M$ beta testers for a number of versions, and have always been "early adopters" all the way back.
They are also people who tend to get bored with OS-related arguments very easily, and are always ready to move on to something new.
Nothing here is meant to be for or against such people; it's just what I've observed.
Myself, I haven't even tried it yet.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Let me start by saying that I'm no Microsoft fanboy. I can't think of one good reason to run Windows on my servers (<3 freebsd), but I do prefer it over nix/bsd for desktop use; I'm a gamer, and virtual machines are enough to give me my linux fix. I tried Vista RC2 very briefly and hated it. After my display drivers became so problematic that I literally could not see anything properly enough to even log in, I gave up.
However, I was building a new rig a few months ago and decided to give it another shot, only for DX10. In months of very heavy use (running games + movies + several virtual machines at the same time), I've been pleasantly surprised how decent it has turned out to be. The only problem I've had is widescreen not working in one game (which was achieved through an unsupported hack in the first place). The UI is significantly better, and I really do miss the improvements when I use my XP laptop for anything productive. Stability has been great, I haven't had any sort of entire-os crash at all. Drivers were exactly as they were in XP: visit site, download, click next a few times, reboot, done.
Maybe my experience is atypical, but I think the amount of criticism Vista gets is unwarranted; in particular, it really bothers me when people bash it when their experience with Vista comes from nothing but /. comments by users with equal Vista experience. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? No. Could Microsoft have done better? Very much so. Is it better than XP? Definitely.
I share Jim's experience with Vista and some of the pain. I very quickly realized that it was hopeless. I had to get a medium performance computer up and running on my network quickly. I bought it with Vista, set it up and found that the only things recognizable on the network were the interface to a print server and my fax machine! The rest of the computers, printers and access points were not findable. A quick trouble shoot indicated that I would have to download a network component for each of my XP systems, install reboot and hope. I did one but it didn't show either. I couldn't locate any shared printers via Vista and could only install one networked printer by hard coding the IP address. By the way there was an hours worth of updates to install on a new system, 20+. It also brought a 3.2 GHz Pentium with a gig of memory almost to its knees. Enough is enough. I installed Ubuntu and it immediately recognized my entire network. It took a few minutes to install the networked printers and I am off an running with no problems. Fortunately I don't need any Windows unique software on this system, Open Office and Firefox do the trick. I have been recommending to my clients to wait on Vista. I am now going to recommend that they wait until Vista is replaced or switch to Linux or buy a Mac. Frank
Vista is the abusive one to the world. Always causing trouble and hurting the people around them...
And what about us *nix and osx people? We're the "friends" .. the person you go to when you have troubles or just need to talk. Will we ever be "relationship" material? Will we ever just be USED by the abused one? (oh.. just to be used even once... we could show them how amazing we really are). God forbid they get seen using a mac or a linux box though! OMFGBBQLOLZWTF! What a horrible thought, what would the general society think?!!
But ... they always go back to the abusive one... *sighs*
Thanks for making my point. It's good to see that the attitude is alive and well here on Slashdot. Sometimes I think that a lot of the hostility here is just posturing against the "norm". You know, like college students that go around telling everyone how hip they are because they don't watch TV or listen to "commercial" music. Is Windows the BESTOSEVAROMG!!! ? No, it's not. But it does what I need it to do with a little effort and it is supported by pretty well every hardware maker out there. I am not saying Linux is bad, it's just not ready for primetime. Any time a user needs to compile or mess with a text file you've moved out of the mainstream and the average Joe isn't going to want to do anything like that. Other people in this topic have said as much as well.
I bailed on MS after windows '95 came out. It sucked. I have used only Linux since.
I suppose that sooner or later everyone will learn.
I open up the one copy of PC Mag I have sitting by desk, and read Dvorak's column from 1998 in which he predicts that Windows 98 on a Pentium 2 is more power than anyone will ever need, and that WebTV will make home PCs obsolete.
Win2K SP4 lives on an old laptop of mine, and works just great. So I guess it's a viable desktop option for some of us. It feels snappier than XP to me, but who knows.
I'm not an OS X troll. I have a Gentoo desktop, a MacBook, a RHEL install, and the Windows laptop I mentioned, and they all get regular use right now for the big project I'm working on. For the average consumer, OS X is the killer, hands down.
Well at least you didn't spend $300 bucks to install Mandriva.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Of course, like any new laptop, it comes with Windows Vista. Despite my misgivings about Vista, I decided to keep it for a few days before nuking it (and the 20GB of recovery partitions that Toshiba stuck on there).
Put simply, it is slow and inefficient, broken in a number of ways and seriously crash-prone. I booted it up; ran the first-time wizard; started Vista up and watched Explorer crash (and come up with the "Report to Microsoft" dialog). So, I rebooted the computer, thinking that maybe the Toshiba recovery needed a reboot to get things working. Explorer didn't crash after reboot, so I assumed everything was OK.
Later, I'm attempting to edit my network config for the static IP (DHCP is disabled on my router as I run a server, and the router lacks the "static DHCP" option). UAC comes up (about 6 times throughout this process), but on one instance manages to permanently hang the network settings window, requiring that I kill the process.
That's an annoyance, sure, especially as it is a new system with no additional software (except Toshiba's stuff). I eventually get the networking going good (though Vista still refuses to see the SMB shares on my Powerbook G4, even though it sees my PC's shares just fine, and my PC [running XP] sees my Powerbook's shares just fine). So, I go on the Internet and obtain Firefox (what, you think I was going to use IE7? You must be joking.), which installs smoothly and works flawlessly on Vista. I'm quite happy about this.
Later, I'm playing Warcraft over LAN with some friends over, and, in the middle of a game, Vista's firewall decides that it should start blocking Warcraft's communication. Keep in mind that I've been playing for, oh, 4 hours at this point, and Vista has given me no trouble. Suddenly, the firewall dialog appears in the middle of my screen, and requests that I block/unblock the program. Of course, I choose Unblock, and a minute later, Warcraft crashes (some kind of network failure in CNet.cpp I think). Odd, of course, as it had been working fine for 4+ hours, so I reboot Warcraft, and half an hour later, the same thing happens (firewall dialog, Warcraft crash, etc.). Evidently, Vista has forgotten that I wanted the program to be unblocked.
Frustrated, I go to edit the settings for the firewall, but Warcraft is already listed as unblocked. We play some more, for maybe 2 hours, and it happens again. Annoying, sure, but I can't do anything about it anymore.
Well, OK, that might be the fault of Warcraft (III) not being updated for Vista or something.
There are other problems: Vista will not go to sleep when I close the lid (probably Toshiba's fault, but XP, which I recently installed, seems to handle that just fine); Vista randomly loses an Internet connection sometimes on a wired Ethernet link; Vista's window manager takes up a lot of RAM (300+MB private bytes) and a constant 3% CPU usage on both cores (on a 2.0GHz Core Duo processor); etc. etc. Even my old Sony VAIO (whose harddrive suffered a major crash after 3 years of service) with XP SP2 worked better and had fewer random bugs/crashes.
Summary: I am extremely displeased with Vista. Microsoft had 5 full years to improve their operating system, and instead, they have something that's less usable, less stable and more bloated (7+ GB for a fresh installation?) than their aging Windows XP system.
Personally, I'm almost inclined to think that Microsoft is trying to drive continued sales of XP from Vista. True, I haven't given Vista much time -- there are some things nice about it, like the revised Start Menu -- but in that short time it has utterly failed to please me.
- An unhappy Vista user, for the record.
I had a big block chevelle once, one of the stering coupler (rag joint) bolts sheared off. I would drive the car with no problems for as long as a week at a time with no problems. It was a beutiful car, but at random times it would lurch to the left or right and try to kill me. Running vista is like that. Im on vista now and Im wondering if i'll be able to hit the submit button before a random reboot. Im looking up at slashdots url at the top of explorer 7 and wondering why it has a yahoo icon. It's the other little things that drive me mad, vista reminds me of trying to get the sound card to work on suse 5.0. When the bluetooth stops working for some random unknown reason and I need to plug in a usb mouse, the little recursive you need a mouse to check the search subdirectoy box to load the mouse driver forces a reboot. Vista is a rotten platform for vmware. I just bought my first mac because vista SMB file sharing is broken. Do you guys remember windows ME ? Back then you had a choice, win2k pro, or ME. No real choice now Microsoft has one O.S. and you can choose version 5 or 6. Im done ranting, I should be thankfull, I'll make lots of money supporting this turd over the next 6 or 7 years.
I'll probably never run Vista for the simple reason that good drivers for the 64-bit version will likely be as scarce as they are for 64-bit XP, and because a 32-bit desktop OS doesn't belong in the 21st century. RAM is getting cheaper all the time, and I'd like to not bang my head against that miserable 3.5GB limit.
Frankly, I think that MS should have pulled an OS9->OSX style switch. Total rewrite, no more legacy crap, with the new version running on top of 64-bit BSD. That would ease porting of applications (imagine an all-posix world!), given them a stable base, and provided a modern security model all at the same time. Hell, MS owns Virtual PC. They could have stuck XP in a virtual machine for free, for those people desperate to run old apps.
Alas, I'm sure that Microsoft won't learn a single thing from the Vista disaster, and proceed to carefully and methodically fuck up the next version of Windows just as badly.
I hope that they will be able to recover some of the agility they had 5-10 years ago, but right now, to me personally, Microsoft has become just another big company that has become too big and bloated to be able to effectively listen to the concerns of their users.
This means one or both of the following:
1) As an editor he HAD to push Microsoft products for the ad revenue. When he couldn't any longer, they dumped him.
2) Same as the above, except pushing crap products finally got to him and he quit.
Wonder how many other well-known PC zine employees are getting fed up with being forced to push Microsoft's shit when they know it isn't worth the bandwidth bits or CD pits it came on.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Another happy Vista user?
I've spent almost 30 years in tech (started when I was 11 yo with a teletype, keep your friggin jokes to yourselves), and the last decent product MS made was called DOS 5.0 ! Even that was just playing "keep up" with the market. Anyone that says,"Microsoft made this or that great product!" might want to check again. They either bought it from someone else, aped their design, or hired someone else to create it for them. They are serious, old-school, "buy and conquer" business people, not dedicated techies. They would rather get paid a billion $s for raping customers with a pile of crap, than invest the time and effort into making a good product.
Yea, I know the mantra,"If they didn't have to provide backwards compatability for third-party hard/software, it would be a better system." Wake up. They DON'T provide backward compatability! They're just tacking new crap on top of old, and they break shit all the time! If your app from DOS or Win95 still works you're lucky, that's all. I've had several apps that broke on new OS releases,
just like they're doing with Vista, and XP before that, and NT before that. If you want backwards compatability, the only good way I can think of to do that is to run the old OS in a VM. That way you get the benefits of the new OS, and can run all your old stuff on the old OS.
I've talked about Linux with my family and friends, and they all bring up the same points: their games (or Apps) won't play on Linux; who cares about whether it's free or not, they just pirate windows and its' apps anyways. When I point out that Linux has very few (effectively none) virus or spyware weaknesses, they just say that they use (pirated) Norton. Why should they use GIMP when they've got the latest (pirated) Photoshop? Windows has built up an accepted culture of theft in modern society, and conditioned people to think that it's okay.
I used to pirate. I used to collect software and cracks and trade them with others. Then I found free/shareware programs that were really good, and I started looking for and using more of it. It felt good to not have to be afraid of getting caught with $80K worth of stolen software on my machines. I've gradually moved to using legit and free software, and it feels good. It wasn't quick or comprehensive, there are still apps we use that are proprietary, but they are getting fewer as I find freeware replacements.
MS has given us a fairly consistent (fairly F*ed up) computer environment for the last 20 yrs, yet it has also made thieves of most everyone I know. Has it been worth it?
No.
When you want something built, come see me. If you want correct grammar and spelling, get a F*ing liberal arts student.
... a few hundred million people who say "well, this Vista now is the very last MS wagon I'll jump onto, because I have to (bla bla), but the next time, I swear, (mumble, mumble)" etc.
MS doesn't care to have friends, fans or enthusiasts, a huge number of long term "for the last time" customers is just as good to them.
After all, a business model that works, some Jim Louderbacks notwithstanding
You might be happy with a seven year old OS, but most of us would like something a little more modern. Most GNU/Linux distributions have been through two stable releases since 2001 and each brought real improvements and features.
I don't begrudge your happiness but that kind of thing is short lived. Sooner or later XP users are going to join w2k, ME, 98, 95, 3.1 and DOS users who can't find new software or replacement devices that work with their OS. The non free software forces are working on new formats and devices that won't work with XP. If you wait too long, your work harder to transfer and your losses will mount. The waste of your time and effort is intentional and is the way the upgrade treadmill works. Those who think otherwise live in a fool's paradise.
Free software is the only upgrade that escapes the non free data trap and upgrade treadmill. The purpose of non free software is to make money for it's owners. To do this, the owners must keep users helpless and divided. Free software has a simpler purpose, to do what users want.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
People so much in love and applauding vista forget about xp's beginnings which were fare more rocky. Then it was going from a non nt to nt kernel, a fare more radical step. Things took even longer to iron out drivers and all, from what I recall. Vists ahould take less time since they aren't moving that far up the tech ladder I agree, but this is the way it is. My frustration with vista is not having a good way to report bugs and see they have been reported. I like sun, I report java bugs and can easily find out if they exists already and read comments. I think if ms had an open bug system like sun it would do a world of good, especially if we could see what bugs they are targeting for releases. Maybe it exists somewhere but I don't know about it.
People should Analise what they need first and move after, what is the point to move to a new OS when the current one has proven to do the job just fine. Moving to Linux also might be as stupid has moving to Vista.
Funny posts!
Poor little windows users must feel so trod upon.
The only thing is Linux is ready for prime time. And users can run it dual-boot if they still need their wondows training wheels.
There is a really good GUI interface for configuration and the stuff isn't that hard. Really. The fact that Linux allows people to customize and configure doesn't mean they have to or have to know all about it. Microsoft hides that stuff from users and makes it hard to do your own configuration. There was another thread here about how all the ad servers slow down web page loading and it was mentioned there that Vista won't let you add offending sites into the hosts file. I did it on a Linux machine and an Apple laptop running OSX - and it was easy. now I don't have any more offending popups or ad junk and my pages load really fast - just with blank spaces where the ads would have been otherwise.
But people don't need to know how to do that stuff but they can if they want. Lots of stuff comes with step by step instructions. People can go with the stock setup - which right out of the box is much more secure and capable than windows - or they can *if they want* learn more and actually administer and configure their own computer. I will take the path of choice rather than have my hands tied by Bill and Steve.
But the windows crowd needs to take a powder. Their fav OS is getting knocked because it sucks. They need to accept that and get on with their lives.
I'm starting to wonder at this point is... how much of the Vista hate is just hype-driven? ... [people] dislike it because others, whose opinions they're willing to trust, do.
No one hates Vista, it's just software. Only tools from M$ talk about "hate" when people have the nerve to say Vista does not work. That kind of talk makes me think you have a strange definition of "happy" when you say are a happy Vista user.
Trusting someone like Louderback is entirely reasonable. He's a M$ fan. He gave Vista nine months and worked hard to make it work for him. As Editor in Chief of PC Magazine, he has access to resources that should have made him happy. If M$ can't make him happy, they won't make you happy. It's a lot more reasonable than listening to some random dude from Slashdot who looks like astroturf.
There are clear risks and no benefit to Vista and it's hurting PC sales. Are you going to spend $300 and play application roulette for something with bugs the size of Manhattan? Are you going to buy a new computer with it? Few of us will. I'm not, unless it comes with gnu/linux on it. M$ fans are not because they can't be sure XP will work with it. You are going to have to produce a big list of cool stuff Vista does to convince even M$ users to migrate when other M$ fans have such negative opinions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I agree that your average user won't be doing this, but they could if they did a little reading. If I hade a pound for every user who's come to me about an error message that tells them EXACTLY what the problem is...
I'm not saying Microsoft Windows is bad, just that it's not ready for prime time. Maybe Microsoft will catch up to other O/S vendors in another 10 or 20 years. It's fortunate for them that they're a protected monopoly and they'll probably have that time.
That subject line should be sufficient to invalidate most of parent.
Vista 64 is OK. I'm not sure i'm a fan of the new memory management. I have 8 gigs of ram and do 3d animation etc. Vista loves to eat up all of the memory, and then when my apps need it, it slowly gives it to the app however it still triggers swapping as it does so. And it is frustrating and anoying.. not to mention SLOW.
The new file explorer UI is good, but it hides too much on its tree menu when you open a file explorer. Its hard to explain but it takes a few clicks to get to a drive, or to look through your "favorites".
The integrated search is very nice.
I'm not having too much difficulty with Vista. I'm liking it, although i have been feeling that file operations were slow... and now i noticed MS has an update that improves that dramatically. I dont like the DRM features, but none have been an issue for me yet.
The only real reason i'm running Vista is because XP 64 doesnt get enough driver support. Vista 64 has better driver support Otherwise i'd probably run XP 64 and install MS's desktop search addon...
The thing i dont like is the complete unstable nature of the PC DESKTOP. Suddenly things are quite messy, and i blaim microsoft.
Vista on a whole, usage wise... seems to work fine for the most part but... i'm not convinced that it is required.
If you install it... install VISTA 64.
"I gave Vista too much free pass".
I have to ask, "Well why the hell did you do that?"
You shouldn't give a good review to something that isn't working well simply because you THINK or HOPE it will be fixed in the future. Doing so is selling yourself out and isn't responsible journalism.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
to be brutally honest with the Mac fandom crowd, a hell of a lot more inexpensive than the Macbook
Mac fans are not disturbed by the fact that your cheap-@$$ laptop is only semi-functional.
Slashdot users in general are far more tech-savvy than the majority of computer users out there. Also, it is very easy for us Slashdotters to participate in conversations about operating systems and new technologies only with eachother. Because of this, we continually get a one-sided view of things and we have gotten to the point that there are rarely any good arguments between us anymore -- its always just a comment board full of Microsoft/RIAA/MPAA/yada/yada bashing instead of decent discussions about not only the flaws but also the positive aspects of the situation.
Home Users:
Many of the posts above claim that switching from Windows to Linux or MacOS has been a great decision on your part. I'm glad you have found the best solution for your personal needs. However, please do consider that an overwhelming majority of computer users don't even know (or care to know) how to change their screen resolution yet alone ever fiddle around with tweaking settings, etc. Keep in mind that your needs are much different from that of the average PC user. While switching away from Windows was a great alternative for many Slashdotters, it is simply not so for the average Windows user.
When I installed Vista for the first time I was very excited to see that I didn't have to download a single driver for my Dell XPS. I had installed Windows XP on it countless times (due to Spyware and viruses) and nearly every time I forgot to burn a cd that had Dell's networking drivers on it -- with Vista this would not be an issue anymore. However, this was probably the only thing I was happy with about Vista.
I found it to be very sluggish and the copy/move file issue is almost enough for me to delete this entire post and go on with my day. UAC will be nice someday but currently it is just another default setting that I have to switch after an install. The reworked network will come in handy when IPV6 comes around but I can see how the average user wouldn't give a hoot. The user interface is nice and a lot of the work that went on behind the scenes to make it possible also means easier development of future features, but it should be more than simply a 3d window switcher and translucent title bars. I certainly don't feel like the new additions to Vista warrant the price tag. In fact, I wouldn't spend more than $100 on a copy of Vista Ultimate -- I'd rather have a slightly thicker wallet and be running Windows XP.
Gamers:
I saw a number of posts about people having difficulty playing games in Vista. Although I'm not aware of the specific issues discussed in those posts, I'm willing to bet that they were caused by graphics driver issues which is out of Microsoft's control. If that isn't the case, the issues at hand were probably caused by the developers of the game writing code that relied on the fact that took advantage of unsupported effects of certain api. They never should have written the game this way in the first place and what it does is prevent Microsoft from rewriting parts of the operating system without breaking anything. (Much like how many popular websites use unsupported CSS hacks because they work but then complain when Microsoft or Mozilla makes a change to an unrelated piece of code that breaks the hack -- which never should have worked in the first place.) But back to my point, there is no current viable alternative to Windows for gamers that want to play any game off the shelf.
Developers:
I don't understand how anyone can program without a graphical debugger such as the one included in Visual Studio -- props to all of you who do and are happy about that. For me, the ability to easily step through lines of code as they execute, manipulate memory in real time, and change the order that code is executed has easily saved me from hours of otherwise tedious debugging (asserts and cerr can only do so much.)
Severs:
To be honest, I'm not very familiar with server technologies. Linux seems to definitely have a head-up on Windows in this market -- at least for people that just want to dev
The OS being a resource hog is (at least in part) caused by the DRM.
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
"The [allegedly] slow adoption of Vista is not due to DRM; it's because the OS is a resource hog"
I just ordered a new Dell. Limited budget so it's only got 1 gig of ram. It ships with bloody Vista! 1 gig of ram... Jesus. First thing that'll be happening when I open the packaging is I'll be slapping in my XP Pro disk, followed by an Ubuntu disk. (Sadly I don't live in an area that can get the Dell with Linux instead of Windows.)
I was in an argument with people just the other day over Vista. Someone was bitching about it, and some responded "Well don't use it, it's not like your forced to." To which I pointed out that actually, if you buy a new computer, you are forced too if you don't have install disks, which most people likely don't due to the shitty recovery disks you get with systems rather than real install disks. You're only LEGAL option is what? Go with Linux, or stick with Vista, or you can try and find a legit copy of XP somewhere.
So the person took a new direction and started saying how all those condemning Vista are crackpots, he bought up 9/11 conspiracy theorists and lumped the anti-Vista crowd with them... Classy!
Now this article, from Louderback... I mean here's a guy who was pro-Vista, has been supportive of MS etc... And he's saying he's done.
How much more is it going to take for the drones to wake up and realise that Vista is one giant clusterfuck, with innumerable problems, not to mention crippling DRM, and who knows what else under the hood. (Like the adware that Microsoft recently patented.)
OS wars will always happen, but it seems that the defenders of Vista aren't just fanboys, they're delusional.
And before you go ranting about me being a pro-MS whore or whatever, remember, the worst thing you can do is underestimate an enemy.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Is it me? Or are AC's not even trying anymore?
Really? I have never gotten Windows to connect reliably to a WPA connection. I have to keep reconnecting, it often won't autoconnect, I have to manually connect on bootup. Sometimes I even have to physically remove and re-plug the wireless card/dongle to make it connect properly. I've had the same problem with multiple machines.
With Ubuntu, OTOH, I slapped a wireless card into my laptop, it autodetected the card, installed the drivers in a few seconds, popped up a window showing the networks it could detect, I clicked on mine, it popped up and asked for the password, I provided it, and from then on it just worked.
The thing though, is that XP isn't really a 7-year-old OS. It *would* be if Microsoft quit development on it, but they're continuing to patch it and add more support for it. I suppose you could call it a 3-year-old OS, since SP2 came out in 2004, and SP3 apparently is only adding support for more registration keys.
Calling Windows XP a 7-year-old OS is like calling modern Linux systems nearly 4 years old because the 2.6 branch was released in late 2003. Or that servers are running 6-year-old OS's because the 2.4 branch was released in 2001.
I bought 3 laptops for my family, two of them were Turion X2's one by acer, one by gateway, and a basic dual core pentium m system by everex. Anyway, the gateway had vista home premium, and the others had home basic. I upgraded the home premium system from 1GB ram to 2.5GB, and got the home basic systems up to a respectable 1.5GB of ram each.
Anyway, after hours of tweaking my gateway I still could not get the damn thing under 210MB Idle at startup with no startup programs running and all useless services turned off (and with XPSP2 I generally like it to be somewhere around 77MB usage max on a clean restart on mem usage considering no other programs are launched ar startup), and the interface, even though it resembled windows 2000 after I was done with it, was still very slow and unresponsive. The networking was a nightmare and didn't work 1/2 of the time, and NONE OF THE SYSTEMS WOULD SLEEP RIGHT! heck, 2 of the systems wouldn't even hibernate for me, and this is a preloaded system. Tech support at gateway, acer, and everex all assured me that it was a driver problem and that all of it was resolved in new drivers....which they hadn't been.... I got excuses stemming from microsoft, themselves, their vendors, driver writers, you name it, excuses, but no solutions.
So I went through updating driver and patch hell, sometimes installing modified xp drivers in attempt to get things working, got called a liar and many other nasty things on some unofficial vista support forums after suggesting I was displeased with the performance and suggesting that this cannot be just the driver's fault alone,
after about 3 hours of dicking around with things so far buried into the operating system I was beginning to think that it was like trying to get Xfree86 running in Red Hat 5 with a ATI radeon back in the day, and several system recovery's later after I screwed up the OS so badly it wouldn't boot anymore, so I threw in the towel and loaded XP on the two laptops that were going to my family members, and left vista on mine. I finally got it running almost decently, and ran it for two weeks and noticed that it tended to slow down at random times.
I found vista required the most work out of the box to make it even slightly functional-
I mean on other OS's, I don't have to surgically remove useless services, ei the windows "nanny", or interfaces which chew up ram to make something look pretty, or find odd versions of drivers which are broken in one regard, but possibly not another, drivers that weren't even made for the device I am using, but perhaps another made by a different vendor with the same chipset. Also it doesn't help that there are stumbling blocks built right into it because they assume that the user is completely useless, or the fact that they re-arranged all the important control panels, and replaced quite a few of them with useless counterparts. I finally gave up on my laptop and loaded XP onto it.
For those who are curious, I did go through a few headaches tracking down drivers for everything in XP, but i found that more often than not the XP drivers were bundled with the vista drivers, or at least the vista drivers somehow worked under XP. I have already loaded XP on 11 of my customer's laptops which came with one form of vista or another, and I have already run out of my little stockpile of XP Pro OEM liscenses I bought a years back... Perhaps I should snag a few more before they disappear.
I've had exactly the opposite experience, running Ubuntu and XP on the same machine.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
"And users can run it dual-boot if they still need their wondows training wheels."
Or if they actually want to play games... I used Linux exclusively for 3+ years. I went back to Windows because I'm a gamer, and could never get this system to dual boot properly. I use race sims which would require my game to work, my wheel and pedals to work etc... It has nothing to do with "training wheels" and everything to do with functionality. I love games. That is STILL the one arena Linux falls over in. Yes, someone will list a bunch of games that run in Linux, and you know what? Most will suck. It doesn't run the games I WANT TO RUN. rFactor, GTR2, Battlefield 2 etc...
Please don't think I'm a Windows supporter because I'm not (well, read my other posts for this story) but to think that the only reason to keep Windows around is because you're a newbie is flat out wrong.
There's a difference between being a Microsoft supporter, and being a realist about Linux.
He admits that he "put together" his own machine. Could that be why it does not wake up from sleep mode? Or why he's having so many other troubles?
I've found that the more someone messes with settings, the more likely they are to cause serious problems down the line. I have no doubt that this self-proclaimed power user has been doing plenty of messing around.
On the other hand, I have a brand-new Dell system which did not ship with Vista. I loaded Vista on it, and everything works perfectly -- including sleep and hibernate. I also have a two-year old Dell laptop which I loaded Vista onto, and it too works perfectly. The wireless reconnects after a standby in 15-20 seconds. Not great, but not bad enough to drive me to Linux.
His issues might have more clout if they were experienced by more people. But it seems to me that the only people "suffering" from Vista are the ones who are using unsupported hardware, or are trying to mess with settings to the point they break things. Oh, there's also the group that spreads FUD about Vista without actually trying it, regurgitating the FUD that others have already tried to spread.
Here's a conspiracy theory: Jim Louderback's new company is a geek-focused video-blog of sorts, professing the greatness of BitTorrent and other open-standard goodness. Could it be that this final editorial was an attempt to give him a little bit of geek street cred? Shame Vista and the geeks will come.
-David
Somewhere in my horrendously badly organized bookmarks I have a page bookmarked that was linked on here I believe, to a guy who got 2000 running on a machine with 32 megs of ram. If I recall the story, even Microsoft contacted him to find out how the hell he did it.
There are genres of PC games that don't exist on consoles.
I don't think we'll see Civ 5 on xbox, or NWN 3 on playstation.
Fung-fu games need controllers, strategy games need mouse+keyboard, c'est la vie.
I personally prefer mouse+keyboard FPSs instead of a controller, but I know many people disagree.
Frankly, one or two buttons, Apple's mouse is terrible. The shape is all wrong, uncomfortable to hold -- unlike their excellent ADB "teardrop" mouse from the pre-iMac days. Ditto about their keyboards!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yeah, I mean come on Microsoft. You guys should have drivers for every single piece of hardware out there already, its' been a whole nine months. If I have obscure XYZ piece of hardware there should not only be a driver made by microsoft (and not the people who made hardware XYZ), but their should be an entire forum devoted to tech support for that piece of hardware. Apple's software works with all the hardware they use, why don't you? What's that? Apple makes all the hardware they're compatible with? Oh...then I'll just shut up. Well...flavor XYZ of linux doesn't have these problems like you do. Oh, they have a much larger base of people helping with these problems? And the people who get the problems had better be programmers or they won't be able to fix them? I guess I'll just shut up now. Am I being too subtle with the sarcasm?
:(){
I see this sort of comment flying around on here, unchallenged. As much as I love MS bashing, does anybody have any links to articles that verify this? Doesn't the DRM only come in to play when you want to watch HD-DVD or Blu Ray movies (or some Windows Media format)? How can it be sitting there chewing cycles at any other time?
Another poster on here insinuated that user's would not want to move from Vista to XP because they like to use P2P programs. How on earth does Vista prevent that?
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
That's like saying your car is as nice as mine, but the engine is only semi-functional. You pay a premium for OS X, but it's worth every last cent.
-- The doctor said I wouldn't get so many nose bleeds if I just kept my finger out of there!
Well, the famous one is A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Guttman; which goes into great detail.
Its not really the DRM, so much, as it is all the "features" (cough cough) that supports the DRM, especially how Vista encrypts alot of traffic crossing the system busses...and how Vista checks the "tilt bits" many many many times per second. All this needless "housekeeping" slows the system down.
You should see how long Vista takes to boot up and run on a Sempron 3100+ with 512mb of ram...
Ye Gods, it's so damned sloooowwwww...
Agreed. The problem is, this time, Microsoft is attempting to force the issue by removing XP from the market. I have spoken to no less than 7 people in the past WEEK alone that are buying new computers now so they can get XP instead of Vista. People don't get to wait the 2 years until the software is stable, Microsoft is forcing them to buy the unstable version so that it can improve its quarterly earnings. When XP was released, Microsoft waited over 2 years to pull 98 from the market. This time, they tried to do it a mere 4 months after releasing Vista, only to extend it to the end of the year (a mere 9 months) after the consumer outcry.
While Microsoft is entitled to pull a product if they don't want to sell it anymore, the flip side of that is that the only reason they can get away with it is because of their power over the market. When a company removes from the market a product for which there is huge demand, to replace it with something with little demand, you can be assured there's something seriously wrong with the competitive status of that market.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
Who hasn't had many issues with Vista.
That said, it doesn't offer much over what XP did, except for a few new icons, better integrated search, widgets, and "Aero" which sucks anyway.
But it works fine. I have an nVidia graphics card for which drivers are quite good. ATI cards (i had one earlier) and I did have some lockups with that, but ATI is notorious for bad driver support, and so I swapped to nVidia. I have a Creative X-Fi card, an HDCP compliant monitor (Dell 24" sweetness!), and a USB Keyboard/Mouse. Everything works just like it did with XP.
I admit, I'm kind of an early adopter. Some things annoyed me constantly, like the User Account Control (UAC) and I turned off almost immediately. I run as "Administrator" on my PC. Sleep doesn't work worth a damn, and will always lock up my PC if I try it (It's a custom build though). Didn't work that well under XP either, for that matter.
The issue with Vista or XP or Microsoft on the desktop versus Linux isn't really the issue here. It's a suite of products that Microsoft offers as a complement to their OS which makes Microsoft on the desktop a reasonable business case for most folks. To be sure, not all folks -- I am not going to try and kid you here. Linux has a lot of benefits, so does Mac, but in the end Microsoft development tends to be cheaper and easier to support than any other software deployment for large organizations.
And why do a lot of people have Windows on their PCs at home? "I use it at work." It's not an uncommon answer, and if you can step away from the Slashdot bias (I know it's tough, but try), ask average, every day users why they have a Windows PC at home. That will be in the top 5 answers. That, and Windows PCs are pretty cheap too, and only idiots buy pre-built Linux PCs because frankly, you can get Windows for $25 and format it with Linux ANYWAY. Few people buy Linux PCs for their kids to use, because there are almost zero educational games for Linux. Dell gives people the option because it is pure profit for them to do it -- it's only changing a standard image that the PC you are buying is getting rolled out. Very easy to do, and costs them nothing. You actually wind up paying a premium because you lost out on a copy of Windows for $25 that you could have kept for some other purpose.
I digress though... Windows PCs in the enterprise are generally the norm. Office in a corporate environment is also a 'norm'. Now add to that Sharepoint, which is now Microsoft's fastest growing product, BizTalk which allows for rapid software development without any coding whatsoever (it's all graphical coding) and allows business managers to make changes to 'software' without requiring a developer. Then there is IIS which is probably MS's best product. Other software like Softgrid, SMS, Project, etc... these are all tie-ins to IE, and a Windows based desktop.
If you move to Linux on the desktop, you lose all of those options, and there are no quick fixes to find replacements. Want software to manage and inventory your entire enterprise, roll out patches, software, and lock down workstations for different users? SMS+Active Directory are pretty easy and pretty cheap, and work on Windows only. Is there an equivalent for Linux or Mac? Probably -- but then you lose out on something else, like say, Sharepoint Server which you really could use for your document management, or BizTalk where you wanted to let your managers change business logic on the fly without a developer.
See, the way Microsoft beats Linux and Mac on the desktop is by pushing it through on the corporate side. If we want Linux or Mac to take over the desktop, then they need to offer a SUITE of products. Mac will frankly *never* take over the desktop because it's a closed architecture and they are the only ones who sell the hardware. For a lot of companies, that's like dealing with a mafia and they won't have it. Linux has a great shot, and with the "Click and Run" technology coming out I'm very excited to see the future of Linux as it draws closer
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
99% of the networking problems I see on a day-to-day basis are due to Norton. ...along with "slow systems" and a host of other "doesn't work" problems. Uninstalling Norton is like a breath of fresh air to most machines.
No sig today...
Thanks for all the great comments. I'm even happy that someone remembers something I said on ZDTV five years ago, now that's the memory of an elephant.
Why care about networking and wireless? Because it's the lifeblood of my computers. I share tons of stuff with my other computers at home, and I like to see them actually working together. Music, video, files, etc, all run off the network. The XP machines are up automatically, while Vista takes forever. And the made for Vista notebook I've been using is the worst of all of them.
As to the Mac... I didn't have space to get into the sleep problems that our 20" iMac suffers through - like why doesn't it actually go to sleep reliably, and why is the fan so loud. Guess I shouldn't have purchased one of the last PPC iMacs, or maybe I should just buy a new Mac every year...
FWIW, I didn't leave because I was sick of pandering to Windows, or any of those other suggestions. PCMag has always been, and will continue to be independent. The editors there make the best decisions about products based on their voluminous knowledge and experience, not because of advertisers. Witness the strong Mac-based reviews recently, for example.
jim
I bought a new laptop because my existing one needed to go into service. I'm naturally disinclined to use something unproven but I was given no choice (I reckoned that the hardware mattered more to me so I went ahead).
Anyway, to cut a long story short - I will *never* use Vista again. I had Vista "for business" but it is better named "AGAINST business" for the following reasons:
It doesn't work. This was on a Sony VAIO SZ4, so-called "Vista ready". Well, it wasn't. Frequent lockups, a gazillion popups ("you have moved your mouse - allow/deny?"), running like a slug, taking forever to boot up, I could go on. If I hadn't used Beryl on Linux I could have suffered under the delusion that Vista is just heavy on the machine because of graphics but Beryl proves it can be FAST and pretty if you code properly.
It is extremely chatty on the Net. I logged traffic emanating from this machine that I most certainly did not authorise. I spend a good hour or so disabling all the phone-home features that somehow default to the suppliers' preference and there was still plenty going on in the background. Sorry, not in my backyard, not with IT *I* paid for and not with bandwidth that is under *my* contract. If you want to hire my computer, go ahead and sign a contract, otherwise it's simply theft (that's what spam is as well).
DRM IS A MAJOR, REPEAT, MAJOR THREAT TO BUSINESS STABILITY AND RESILIENCE. Analyse how DRM works: the chain from origin to output has to be 100% functional for you to reach your information (that's why the word "chain" is so appropriate here). That has a few obvious implications and I can't believe that so little is made of it. Tell me where I'm wrong here:
- if any component in the chain fails, access to any DRM "protected" resource is impossible. I may be wrong here, but AFAIK that means the MTBF of such a chain is the lowest MTBF of the components involved, divided by the number of components. That makes failure not a probability, it makes it a certainty.
- it puts serious barriers in the way to fast recovery from problems.
- NONE of the components in this chain is of a long and trusted heritage. I would be very interested to meet the person who is willing to entrust his entire corporate infrastructure to a Microsoft + hardware vendors beta test. As it happens, it appears many are prepared to do so - it's going to be interesting to see anyone claim off insurance when it goes wrong.
As for that laptop, I solved the problem with installing Ubuntu, VMWare and an as yet unused OEM copy of Windows XP (I don't use unlicensed software). Works for me, stable, and less of a worry re viruses (I have been using Openoffice.org for a year now as it works under Linux AND Windows).
Vista? No way. From what I hear from others it has proved quite a sales push, but for Windows XP licenses, Macs and Linux. Given the amount of talent MS has hired I take that as the lowest return on investment ever.
They can keep it.
Insert
Undoubtedly the biggest waste of money was most likely in the (FU)DRM, who knows hoe many trial versions were scrapped due to failure before the settled on the one that only mostly fails rather than always fails. PC Magazine editor-in-chief Jim Louderback has to be congratulated for his efforts, I got pissed of with Vista after fours hours, reformatted drive and settled on stale piss for the game boot.
Ballmer is desperate to get across the board licence fees into the windows OS just like the xbox, this failure is just another indication of his technical incompetence.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Well, the famous one is A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Guttman; which goes into great detail.
And is mostly FUD, resulting in people believing things like this:
Its not really the DRM, so much, as it is all the "features" (cough cough) that supports the DRM, especially how Vista encrypts alot of traffic crossing the system busses...and how Vista checks the "tilt bits" many many many times per second. All this needless "housekeeping" slows the system down.
Vista only does this when you are using DRM-encumbered media. It does not do it at other times.
Vista users are unhappy because Yahoo Chat doesn't work. Really. YC works on W98, XP Home, and works great on Mac. You can't make voice work because of DRM.
I work for a nonprofit and end up fixing computers for a lot of volunteers. These volunteers bought a shiny Dell or Gateway to talk to their kids and grandkids over the internet and thought a new computer would help them do that better. HaHaHa.
With Vista, you log in, navigate through a heirachical menu with about 7 clicks to get to your group, check it, and get only text. The audio is disallowed because Yahoo didn't run it through MS DRM.
With the Mac (Mini), you log in, Yahoo lists your chat groups, click on one, and you're blabbing like it's a cell phone.
Ah, the Slashdot display system will trash this comment, but if you get it, ponder the design philosophy between W and Mac. And you won't come back because of it, so I'm just spitting (Slashdotting) in the wind.
Me too, proving once more that data is not the plural of anecdote. Personally I feel like it's a toss-up either way. I've had my share of horror stories in windows and linux.
I still don't feel the configuration mechanisms they've come up with so far in linux are up to scratch though. The original stuff such as the ifupdown-tools are really more suited to very static environments. Networkmanager can be nice but it really sucks at any kind of error reporting and is not yet (in the latest version of ubuntu) at what I would call production level in terms of quality.
As for windows, well, I don't actually use it much nowadays, but it occurs to me the things I hate about networkmanager (such as sometimes very crappy error reporting capability) is exactly the thing that annoys me in windows as well. While some stuff does get logged to syslog it seems you're forever guessing what is happening in the background. Not a problem if everything "just works" but I tend to like/dislike stuff based on how much of a crapshoot it is when things don't work.
Since I have nearly 20 years of pleasant transitions from Apple, why would I worry about the next one? The naysayers say wait for version 2, because that's what they are used to in the Windows world. In the Apple world, I'd say be wary of a product at the end of its lifetime, because Apple is preparing to abandon it as soon as the next great thing is ready for prime time.
Being an early adapter in the Apple world also ensures longer usable life span. Unlike early MS products, I'm not spending most of my time tweaking, patching, and installing driver updates, just to get the stupid thing to work. My Intel iMac will get several years of use, where as if I had bought a G5 iMac at the end of its life-cycle, I would have dumped it by now (in favor of an Intel iMac). Apple is pretty consistent with product release too, so I know that this recent bump in iMacs guarantees nothing new is in the works for a good year or two. By then, my Intel iMac will be three years old, and I'll gladly plop down another $2k for a shiny new Mac.
But you don't have to actually have a previous version of OS X to install said "upgrade". For $130, you get the newest version of the OS on CD....Period! It isn't an upgrade, because you don't have to have OS X installed for the "upgrade" to work (or at least not up through X.49, but that may change). So in effect, you are getting the "full" OS (even if it is able to be licensed on non-Macs...yet).
The difference between a home-build PC and a PC from (say) Dell is little enough that the OS wouldn't be able to tell.
If there is a difference, its that you get more standard and higher quality components if you buy/build it yourself. Pre-build companies use the cheapest shit they can find (profit margin) and make stuff non-standard on purpose so you have to buy their overpriced servicing and replacements. On example is Dell's cross-wired power connector. All the same wires as a standard power-supply and same connector, just wired on different pins. Replace your Dell's blown PSU with an off-the-shelf one and its goodbye PC.
Actually I would expect a home-build PC to be more likely to run Vista properly than a pre-built PC, not less.
Windows has become a legacy plugin for us. I work in a small automated equipment manufacturer where a majority of our software development takes place in Windows and all of our products run Windows, yet we are almost entirely an Apple shop. Our setup for everyone is a 24" Dell FPD and a Macbook with wireless keyboard and mouse. Development takes place in Windows 2000 running on the phenomenal Parallels 3.0. Because of 3rd party hardware and legacy software, our product runs on Windows, specifically 2000 pro. A brief foray into XP was cut short when a customer had to replace a vision board in their $250K machine and XP required reauthorization. Try talking a Malaysian tech through the process of calling an 800 number and reading long sequences of characters to someone at an Indian call center, when the equipment is not connected to the internet and is separated from the nearest outside line by an airlock, all the while the downtime is costing them $10,000/hr - all held hostage by a company that thinks we're ripping off their $200 software.
On the server side we're running samba, svn, apache, everything but the kitchen sink on Suse, ~500 day uptime so far.
So as long as we can keep using downgrade licenses and deploy 2K, Microsoft will keep getting our money, but if we're ever forcibly migrated to XP or God forbid Vista, we will finally have to face the fact that Windows in not an industrial O.S. and we'll have to port to Linux.
So yes, it is an upgrade, but unlike the Windows world, it is also a full install. I understand you are disgruntled because you want to use OS X on cheap PC hardware (or you want to buy a Mac without paying for OS X being installed), but that doesn't make your post correct. You are playing word games and not looking at the issue objectively.