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Consumer Group Demands XP for Vista Victims
thefickler writes "Dissatisfaction with Windows Vista seems to be swelling, with the Dutch Consumers' Union (Consumentenbond) asking Microsoft to supply unhappy Vista users with a free copy of Windows XP. Not surprisingly, Microsoft refused. This prompted Consumentenbond to advise consumers to ask for XP, rather than Vista, when buying a new computer."
What is so bad about Vista? I have not used it yet. I've seen it, and I know some people that are using it and they don't complain about it. What's the deal? Is it just that it's new?
Boycott Microsoft for... er... Microsoft. That'll show them!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
The Dutch Consumers Union ordered Toyota to give '07 model owners the old '06 models due to rising dissatisfaction with the lower horsepower of the '07 models.
Not surprisingly, Toyota refused.
WinVista lacks a LOT of drivers (for fairly common hardware, too). If you have hardware that WinVista doesn't support, you're unhappy (see years of previous complaints about Linux).
WinVista also has lots of eye-candy which eats up processor time. So it looks pretty, but runs slower. The eye-candy can be turned off, but then it looks a lot like WinXP.
WinVista has a different security model than WinXP and it takes people some effort to learn and in the meantime, they're unhappy with it (again, see years of previous complaints about Linux).
Not all of your apps will run with WinVista, unless you use "compatibility mode" or do some extra steps.
Which is why Microsoft extended WinXP for OEM's.
My friend just bought a copy of XP Pro because he has so much problems with Vista.
No surprise here, M$ has found a way to make the manufactures pay and fatten up the profits. Bet Microsoft does not want to publish downgrade and after market sales replacing Vista. But making lots of money in the process.
It may be that when buying a PC it only comes bundled with XP Home, but the consumer needs XP Pro, in which case it's necessary to purchase the OS TWICE. Or if the consumer wants Linux it's not possible to get rid of the M$ Tax...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
ahem...,
what's that clue that you're talking about. The claim is valid. My scanner worked before and now it does not. That's why I need to stick with XP. Vista reduces the functionality of my hardware.
I'm still wanting to go past that 120 day "trail period" for XP Pro 64bit Edition...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
This is a piece of backlash that should have happened when XP replaced Win2K. Seriously, what did XP add that Win2K didn't have, other than the kiddie-toy "My First Computer" window-dressing and the "phone-home" validation behavior--both of which are non-features as far as I'm concerned?
The consumentenbond is very powerfull, IF a company has its product rated as best it WILL use that in all its ads, it is marketing gold. Being labelled as bad is the exact opposite, MS just got itself a whole shitload of bad advertising and not by some computer mag or newspaper but by an organisation most dutch people believe.
To give you an idea off how powerfull consumer organisations are in holland, this is the only country in the world were Sony will freely and without question exchange PSP's with ANY defective sub-pixel. The ONLY country in the world. Not after you threaten a lawsuit, not after hours on the phone, turn it into a store, if they make trouble refer them to a letter Sony send to kassa and get your new PSP (did it twice until it went past even dutch warranty). Some stores (not sony itself) still try to make trouble, go ahead ask for the manager and tell them to call Sony, Sony will chew them out for you, Sony doesn't want more trouble.
In fact if you are in the netherlands you don't have to accept dead subpixels on anything. I exchanged my iPod video after 6 months, an mp3 player is a device that should last longer, and Apple just had to replace mine or face a court case it was going to loose by default.
This is the country MS refused to simply give XP (costs them NOTHING) to legit buyers of Vista?
Seriously, MS really needs to hire a better public relations officer. They might be lucky that this is the weekend and as such the free working week newspapers won't carry the story but this is just asking for a whole lot of bad press.
On a side not, might Vista's uptake lack because it is harder to pirate? The only people I know who use Vista are those who got it with their new computer for "free". I build my own (and run linux anyway for desktop) so for me Vista would cost a shitload of money. Piracy seems out, wich makes me not use it and therefore I get no experience with it, except for when my friends ask me for advice and I can't give it because I don't know Vista. This actually matters to some as I have helped two people reformat and install XP to get rid of Vista.
I wish just once there was a story from MS that doesn't make it sound like it got some kind of horrible fascination with shooting itself in the foot.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yup. The only issue with Vista is they took too long to get it out of the door. The amount of people I hear complaining about Vista is indeed great, and its NEVER about how bad this or that feature is. Its always about "I can't find Add/Remove programs anymore!!!!", or some such.
XP was sure as hell a MUCH bigger difference from Windows 98/ME of back then (assuming a lot of people didn't jump by NT and 2k), and people did complain, but not quite as much. Now that computers are much more mainstream (I don't know numbers, but I doubt even 50% of Windows users of today even KNOW of anything before the MacOSX and Windows XP era), XP is all they know, so you change that, and they're screwed. People who remember previous upgrades probably remember how they were a lot, lot worse. (Windows XP before SP1 was completly non-viable for me, I stayed with 2k until 2 months before SP2 if I remember well).
What amuse me though is people complaining about the price, when its no different at all than XP's, if you take out the Ultimate Edition (which is the equivalent of Media Center of XP, which was not available retail, only OEM). Home Premium has a lot more features than XP Home had, Business more features than XP pro, and its all the same price XP was 5 years ago (and thus, adjusting to inflation, is a lot cheaper).
I installed Vista, used the HP Driver Disc that came with Vista to upgrade all my drivers, and waited. After everything was done, I checked the system, and two or three devices weren't working. I went to HP's website, and there were no new drivers for them. To make a long story short, we reformatted her computer, and I wiped the drive on mine and we both went back to XP.
"Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
In a sense you are indeed a victim. Most OEMs do not give you any choice on the OS side of a computer story. It's either Vista, or erhm... Vista. And because you do not have a choice you are a victim, of marketing... A friend of mine bought a computer - Pentium 4, 2GB DDR2 - so not even a slow computer, with Vista Home Basic (basically, XP with a different look). It can't load a darn dvd without freezing and forcing me to cut the power. To illustrate Vista's amazing capabilities... I agree with the Dutch Consumer's Alliance, people who were 'forced' to buy Vista should be granted a free downgrade to XP and OEMs should be allowed to sell XP with computers instead of Vista
Vista is nicer operating system
does not sit well with
Yes, it's new and breaks things
WHAT? Operating systems ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BREAK THINGS no matter how "new" they are. Microsoft has had DECADES of experience writing operating systems, Microsoft has INTIMATE knowledge of computer components and how they work, directly from chip makers and motherboard manufacturers, in fact at times Microsoft even has the clout to DICTATE which direction technology will progress. And yet they still manage to "break things"?
Give me a break (yes, it's redundant). For all you stick your tongue up Microsoft's corporate backside, you are not getting a free laptop. So please stop being a "gullible consumer" and stop accepting the "fact" that operating systems are supposed to break things when new. That's simply untrue, and Microsoft doesn't deserve to be "cut some slack".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Vista is a pretty good operating system. The worst things about it are that: 1) it's new.
2) It provides little or no functionality that consumers actually want over XP.
3) It's more complex than XP, due to the "secure-path" code in the kernel.
4) It's less reliable than XP, due to the additional copy protection and secure-path code in the kernel.
5) It has higher kernel overhead than XP, due to the secure-path code in the kernel.
The reason that people go on about the "horrible DRM" is not because the DRM itself is the problem. It's because the changes that were made to support that DRM are most of the real kernel level differences between XP and Vista.
In addition, the new user-visible security features (UAC and the sandbox for IE) are bandaids. They have not made any attempt to address the real problems in the network services, Win32 APIs, and user-level applications that provide such a large surface area to attackers.
Microsoft's real problem is that they did too good a job, for the desktop at least, with Windows 2000. The only shortcomings to Windows 2000 are features that should have been shipped in feature packs... most of them were originally developed on 2000... and everything they've done since then have been attempts to artificially create the appearance of "newness". There were no fundamental changes in XP, and the only fundamental changes in Vista are things that provide no real benefit to the consumer (and actually hurt them).
They got a pass with XP because they presented it as the upgrade path from Windows 9x. They could have done that with Windows 2000... my "Wintendo" (my Windows gaming box) runs Windows 2000, and the first program I found that wouldn't run on 2000... that actually required XP... was a couple of months ago. Something like 8 years after release and 5 years after XP came out. I don't know why they bothered with Windows Me and didn't just push EVERYONE to Windows 2000 as the upgrade path, but I guess they wanted the income from another upgrade cycle. Anyway, XP gave people something new. Vista can't do that.
With Windows 2000 Microsoft has put themselves out of the "operating system company" job. They've reacted by trying to force people to upgrade, and people don't like that. Unbundling Windows and selling the bundled components as separate packages would get them out of this trap, but after fighting so hard to keep that from happening against their will I don't figure they'll do it.
In the meantime everyone who depends on a stable Windows ecosystem is the loser.
For a supposedly Linux-centric site, they sure focus on Microsoft bad news more than anything else.
:P
No, we focus on Apple and Google too
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Go ahead and mod me as a troll. The unhappy Vista users should give a serious look at Ubuntu. I've been using it for over a year on a Dell laptop, and I've installed it (and previously Fedora) for about 10 or 15 friends. With the exception of specific Windows apps (such as Solidworks), Ubuntu apps do everything that Windows XP (the usual old OS) applications do. Email, web browsing, office apps (OOo 2.3 is remarkable), and more. I could go on but I'm (seriously) not a zealot and I'll get a bad enough trolling mod as it is already.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Come on over and join us in the States for awhile. Didn't you know? Everyone's a victim! That is, except on the days when everyone's a hero.
Actually, I'm pretty pleased with Vista--especially on new hardware. If someone has XP and buys Vista as an upgrade, that's just stupid. Pre-installed on new hardware it should work with all the drivers on the machine. The only thing it might not work with is some old printer or maybe some VPN software. It sounds like the ./ crowd is just being anti-new. What was wrong with DOS and the command line anyway.
On a new machine--for consumer and business--I'd go with vista. The DRM seems to be a non-issue for me. WMP plays my CD's and legally ripped music just fine. I haven't noticed any DRM overhead.
Vote me yes on Vista.
The Consumentenbond is taken very seriously here. Today I found an ad folder in the mail from the Mediamarkt (big computer/electronics store here in Holland) with a large ad in it advertising new computers with XP. "We have them again!". I can't find anything about it on their website. I scanned the ad, and I would upload it if I had some place that could handle the load. I'm open for suggestions!
Fox can take the sky from you.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q276304/
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Seriously, having read the comments on this article, I would have thought I was reading a Microsoft forum. Isn't this slashdot? Where are all the M$ haters?
Well, I'm personally not an MS hater per se, and am very happy with working in C# and Visual Studio over using Java and Eclipse. However, when I tried Windows Vista, it lasted all of one month on my computer before I went back to XP. I did really like some of the interface improvements. The Aero interface does look nice, and I liked the screen preview feature of the taskbar. But that was about all I liked.
Why did I switch back to XP?
1. Half of my games wouldn't run in Vista.
2. I quickly got sick of having to click "OK" on 3 different security validation popups every time I'd want to run a program.
3. I got sick of having to acknowledge that I'd turned off security every time I booted up (see number 2).
4. I got tired of having to install half of everyting I bought twice, because it would fail the first time due to the Vista "protect the user from himself" theology. Even though my logon acct was Administrator, it wouldn't install apps as administrator mode until it failed the first time. What the?
5. Of the half of the games that did run, graphics performance was about 15% worse than on Vista. Even when I upgraded to a dual-core and was running two ATI cards in Crossfire mode.
I'm not able to give you a lot of technical "this process was x because they did y in Vista" but the above were my experiences with what was bad about Vista versus XP. Personally, I consider Vista to be on par (as far as MS OS's go) with Windows 98 First Edition. I liked 2000 because it stopped me from getting he "buffer underrun" error every time I'd burn a CD. I liked XP because it gave me a lot more "home" and gaming functionality. Vista is a downgrade from both.
A new Toshiba A200 laptop a friend bought came with Vista. The excessive amount of system alerts which pop-up confused the hell out of him, leading him to click on the adware / spyware browser pop-up ads which also looked like systems alerts, so he installed 5 competing blackmailing "buy me now or you computer is toast" apps for his "protection". These stalled his machine FLAT.
He was ready to axemurder his new computer, and still is cheesed about his first big computer purchase leaving him with such a bad after taste. Luckily I could somewhat untangle the extensive damage.. although we almost did a full wipe and restore, but decided to save that for when we put XP onto it instead (provided we drivers are available!!)
That was before he started asking "what is all this crap on the desktop" re: the widgets, etc. I can't imagine anyone as a beginner getting through the installs, setups, intertangled "welcome" dialog boxes and learning curve without being fully baffled and damaging their system to boot. Obviously Vista is designed to sell more hardware, since noobs can brick their O/S so easily, they will just toss the whole computer as a PoS. Expect vendors to step up as Vista based returns increase!
Oh yeah, this doesn't even mention the amount of buy me and trialware and "marketplace" shortcuts on the desktop.. I'd LOL but I'm gagging.
Microsoft Vista: teh noobs kill YOU!
Hits the nail right on the head.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
This happens every time MS release an OS that changes something. When the "Joe" public went from 9x/me to XP they bleated stuff didn't work. Some guy actually asked me how to downgrade from XP to ME (and that says something about it).
MS write the OS and the MANUFACTURER of the hardware writes the drivers to interact with the OS - it's not MS's fault if HP or any other manufacturer can't be bothered to write drivers - because let's face it, they've known about Vista for long enough, MS have taken a while to get it out and there was a fully public beta trial. None of the mainstream hardware manufacturers have any excuse not to release compatible hardware drivers (unless they choose not to which is just tough luck to anyone with old hardware).
Incidentally, Vista shipped with way more drivers than any previous release of windows.
Right about now you're probably thinking ooh my new doesn't work and it should - well no, actually that's up to the MANUFACTURER of your device you've just purchased to develop and supply that, and if they don't well that's just hard luck really.
There are very few things in this world that are the same but are not. A PC can have so many different bits of hardware in and attached to it that nothing else really compares to it. So it can't be expected that everything works, and that anything that worked before still works - because it's never that straight forward.
And finally, Vista for our machines has been pretty good in picking up hardware and peripherals.
And finally, finally - it took sometime for Vista to be driver friendly and accepted by the "Joe" public, so I reckon by this time next year everything will be right with the world again - provided Google don't break anything with Vista SP1 (yes I said Google XD !!)
Okay, let's assume that Vista doesn't get that much better when SP1 ships out. Can we reasonably expect to see a larger market share of Apples? How about demand for and supply of Linux installed computers?
The amount of people I hear complaining about Vista is indeed great, and its NEVER about how bad this or that feature is. Its always about "I can't find Add/Remove programs anymore!!!!", or some such.
That's an awful lot you're lumping in with "some such".
The worst thing about Vista (ignoring, for the moment, well-documented driver problems, the fact that it spends a significant amount of CPU time working for MSoft and its media buddies instead of you and the fact that I personally don't give a crap about eye candy) is that I'd have to buy a whole new computer to run it.
Fuck that.
And by the way, I moved from Millennium to XP Pro seamlessly. Two printers, a scanner, network card and TV card all worked flawlessly from the moment I installed it.
A buddy of mine who owns a successful computer company went back to the 64-bit version XP Pro after encountering many problems with Vista. He values his clients, and doesn't put it on their machines, either.
If the best you can say about an expensive new OS is that it's "not that bad", I wish you much joy of it. I'll stay with one that works.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
and offer them free copies of *ubuntu, i am sure that will make microsoft happy...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
More like they bought Vista expecting it to work on their $900 rig of two or three years ago, and expecting to have their peripherals actually be compatible.
SRSLY.
Especially when Microsoft won't even admit what they broke.
Go back and read about the network bullshit -- about how playing any sound at all will throttle your network activity to one tenth of what it's supposed to be.
And about how Microsoft still hasn't admitted it's a problem.
Or has that finally been fixed? If so, it's hardly the only problem -- I could point you to one of Microsoft's own products that we kind of depend on which hasn't been ported to Vista, and is the reason I must run XP at work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
..and faster boot time to logon screen. The USB still sucks and the power savings are not optimal, but they usually work to at least some degree.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
They won't give you a free copy of XP, but they will let you trade your Vista license for an XP license?
Or am I thinking of something else?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Will you Windows people stop whining? In the next few years you're going to use Vista, because that's Microsoft's new thing. People whined about XP, and look where we are now. So get on with it. Stop whining and take the plunge. We all know how it's going to turn out, and the rest of us are tired of your bitching.
Alternatively, try switching to a different operating system. For years the most common reasons for not switching to Linux or Mac have been that those operating systems don't support necessary hardware or software and are significantly different than people are used to. Now that Microsoft's own "new thing" is significantly different and doesn't support much hardware or software, it's the perfect time to put your money where your mouth is. Switch to something else, or shut up and take it.
Maybe not
I just bought a tablet PC and unfortunately I couldn't get it with XP Tablet Edition, instead it came with Vista Home Premium and after one week I already hate it (Actually I hated it after one day). It's random behavior, it's intrusiveness and it's theft of resources are just a few of the things that are driving me crazy.
Having Microsoft provide copies of Windows XP to customers will only fix half of the problems on many new PCs as several of the newest laptops and desktops have limited support from the manufacturers for Windows XP (read: non-existent in most cases). In many cases I get a customer who "downgraded" their system only to find that several components are unsupported in XP or have proprietary settings that prevent the generic drivers from working. I hold the Toshiba A215-S7447 laptop up as a good example of this. Although the cynical part of me praises the industry for this revenue stream, it shows that just giving the OS would cause more problems and frustrations for customers in the long run as the software and features pre-installed by the manufacturer that the customer has come to expect are missing from a "vanilla" install of XP.
Most of the complaints I get regarding Windows Vista are of the "I cannot find this feature" or "my 5+ year old piece of software will not work". In nearly all cases like this the problem can be fixed by a little advise on the help system and showing the customer how to use compatibility mode. Hardware is the biggest complaint but again it is almost always for 5+ year old equipment (many of which are no longer supported by the manufacturer) and these are incidentally the same type of customers who complain their sub $500 computer does not have a parallel port.
The majority of the customers that come to me and say "Vista sucks!" are the ones who bought a sub $500 desktop or laptop running Windows Vista Basic meeting the absolute lowest requirements. When you add shared video memory overhead to an already low installed RAM it is no wonder the system bogs down when attempting to do more than one task at a time. Microsoft's biggest mistake was to make this version as in my experience the person who wants to pay the least for a product is the one who tends to be the most vocal about any perceived problems.
One more thing that comes to mind is "who pays"? Microsoft can not be required to pay companies to develop and support their operating system or provide OEM copies of additional value-added software such as DVD decoding or advanced burning capability. The manufacturers of the hardware and especially the large system builders are just as guilty of making the transition as painful as it is.
Vista is not perfect, in fact it reminds me a great deal of Windows XP pre-SP1 and there are a lot of problems that are being ironed out over time. The fact of the matter is unless the hardware manufacturers are willing to incur the additional expense of continuing to develop and support Windows XP drivers, a move to "force" Microsoft to provide "downgrade" disks would be useless to the average customer.
"To travel the paths of human imagination you have to be willing to unlearn all you know"
No, actually. "I can't find XYZ because the icon is different" is literally 90% of the complains I've heard face to face (as in, not online). Oh, and I heard "You need 2 gigs of RAM!" ONCE, from someone who used multiple instances of visual studios and sql management, along with douzans of other programs at the same time (don't know how they lived on XP).
Thats really the totality of the complains I heard. Oh, also "MacOSX is prettier!", once. Which is more a fact than anything, can't argue there.
Vista would like to smack you in the face and call you names.
Cancel/Allow?
Vista thinks you smell bad and have a tiny brain to boot.
Cancel/Allow?
Vista vistas you so hard that your vista hurts when you walk.
Cancel/Allow?
Vista makes you spend all your money, then claims that you gave it a virus and stops responding to you.
Cancel/Allow?
*bows head in shame* Look, you can't say that there aren't Vista victims, because I am one. Yes, Vista victimized me. The worst part is that it claims it's my fault, because I was "totally asking for it." Don't let it happen to you.
These "I had a wonderful Vista Experience Posts" sound
very much like they are coming straight from Redmond's
PR people. They sound way too much like the official
press releases and media events.
Microsoft did the right thing here I think, It's very easy to blame Microsoft for all the problems here but who should support hardware in first place? Microsoft or the manufacture of who made the hardware? We're 8 months now after the release of Vista many company's had time to build Vista drivers for their hardware. If I had a HP printer who doesn't support Vista, I'll blame HP for being to lazy to support my printer. I fully understand that consumers are disappointed when hardware is not working with the newest Windows version and that they blame Microsoft for it. From a consumers union I expect that they tell consumers the truth and how things work and who to blame when things are not working. The consumentenbond takes the easy way here!
How could you not? There has been a LOT of coverage about what people don't like about it. Following the growth curves, there are LOTS of people who have not been "using Windows for years". The particular reasons people don't like Microsoft can be that their products make sucking noises due to hiring and management practices where inexperienced college grads reproduce decades old Comp Sci problems. The farther we get from the 70's and 80's, the fewer well educated designers there seem to be.
Enjoy watching videos and playing iTunes on your new cube heater. =)
I like Vista 64-bit. It is a very nice OS in general. It works very well in general, although my biggest problem with it so far is how Vista caches memory. It doesnt work well when rendering large 3d scenes, that use lots of ram. I have 8 GBs of ram and Vista caches 4GBs most of the time. That tends to piss me off.
Otherwise, its a rather nice os, thats been quite pleasant to use. It uses more resources, but in general on my quadcore it flys.
It is better than XP, security wise, it is also nicer to finally have the GPU doing a lot of gui tasks.
Vista 64-bit is a step in the right direction. I do not like the DRM features, and absolutely performance could be improved a bit, but its not bad at all. I think people like to bitch about things they dont use. I have legitimate complaints about Vista, as a user... but in general i enjoy the OS more than XP.
Yes, it needs more drivers... yes... it needs to have the DRM ripped out of it... but give it a try before you hate it.
Well, you know, Microsoft did not have to change their device driver model. If they kept that the same, then all drivers developed for Win2000/XP would have worked. MS deliberately created a borked system and is marketing it is the best thing since sliced bread. They deserve all the bad press they are getting. At this point in time Vista is an expensive POS.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Because XP can be just as bad as Vista, both are dead-end platforms that will need to be "upgraded" with a $100 price tag to keep using some of the same software. If the consumer group wants to place things in the hands of consumers, it would be to ask for Linux. Sure you need to upgrade Linux, but the software is free and can be run on most any hardware platform, the same can't be said for Vista and XP. Not to mention the DRM thats built in, and WGA.... both of those are anti-consumer more then Vista alone and XP has both even though just minor doses.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
It's vistas fault the whole machine freezes? I doubt that. More likely drivers or hardware.
With all the people out there 'hating vista' I find it amusing that there are some confused individuals who actually love Vista out there who are asserting their denial that Vista sucks.
... or could they?
I think the reasons people are offering for hating Vista are both valid and inconsequential. I say this because it's not the reason that matters so much as the fact that there's discussion about it at all... what's more, there's actually pockets of consumer action growing out there.
Let's take a short walk through recent history shall we?
Windows 3.1:
It was the first "usable" version of Windows. It did things that were arguably miraculous. They created a unified printing, display and user interface such that all software written for it was simply easier and better. No more hoping there is hardware support for your applications. Does anyone remember hunting for drivers to support a printer under AutoCAD or Word Perfect? Not too many people here are old enough to remember that stuff, but I'm here to tell you that it was a big deal and I was singing Microsoft's praises as a savior for the PC and its users.
Windows 3.11... Windows NT:
Progress and improvements! Things just kept getting better. People were happy and excited to upgrade. Things couldn't be better!
Windows95:
WOW! What an amazing difference! A bar at the bottom of the window with a menu system? Sure it was Mac-like, but it was still a wonderful improvement in terms of style. For those already accustomed to Win 3.1 and all that, we knew it was essentially the same OS but with more 32-bit-ness which, even though we didn't fully appreciate what that meant at the time, we knew it was good somehow. Windows95 wasn't "worse" than any of its predecessors and we were still happy to get it because it just looked cooler.
Windows98:
More 32-bit-ness. Cooler still. More old DOS stuff being hidden from the user... some didn't care for it, others appreciated it. We were all generally accepting of it though.
Windows 2000:
Awesome. We didn't have to understand that there were some serious underlying differences to be experienced there... we could just "feel" the differences somehow. It was still Windows NT and as such required more computing power than Win95/98, but for those who craved the improvements that Win2000 offered, it was worth giving in and upgrading the hardware to get it somehow... and yet many remained with Windows98... some serious departure from the "Happy Microsoft Upgraders" mentality is really starting to show now.
Windows ME:
Do I really need to mention it? I guess there were some 'good ideas' in there, but frankly, I never used it. If I wanted to "upgrade" from Win98, I went to Win2000. Like most people, I just stepped right by WinME.
Windows XP:
It's all about the eye-candy. Windows XP didn't offer anything that Windows 2000 didn't already offer. What's more, there was no "Windows XP server." What was that all about? My first attempt at putting WinXP on a machine revealed a slow machine that was once pretty nice under Win98 or Win2000. And given that XP didn't actually offer anything exclusively better in terms of functionality, I ignored it for a long long time... eventually as old machines died and were replaced with newer, better machines, I didn't mind going to XP so much... so eventually XP won its way in by exhibiting patience. No one clamored for XP... they just accepted it. But neither was there mass rebellion against XP.
Windows Vista:
It was a long time in coming. For some it was a dark cloud. For others it held the promise of fixing a lot of things and delivering a LOT of new, interesting and exciting new toys and technologies. Delivery and development delays kept coming and coming. Eventually features were dropped one by one... the hopefuls began to lose faith... the "dark cloud" folks were actually a little relieved since it meant the possibility of less chaos when it
I hate to agree with a so-called "troll" here but he really does have a point -- I lived in his "hell" for a month on this HP/Compaq notebook that came with Vista. When it spontaneously uninstalled its own hard drive controller driver last week, rendering itself unbootable (ironically, the bootloader could bootstrap the kernel, but mysteriously then the kernel instantly forgot how to talk to the disks -- the only repair option available? Blow it all away and reload the factory image), I removed Vista entirely and stuck Ubuntu 7.10 on this thing. I've been happy every since :)
Things run faster, are more stable, and I have more useful tools and software here. OpenGL (3D stuff) works great, I can still run all the apps I use (since they're cross-platform anyway :)), and I get my work done much faster. Strangely, I'm even getting *much* better battery life out of the internal battery on the laptop *and* on the external battery I use to extend the internal battery's life. Bluetooth *never* worked right in Vista, yet I'm tethered to a Windows Mobile 6-based phone wirelessly (via Bluetooth) for its Internet Connection Sharing right now to post this.
I think I'll take this idea offered by the original article here and go bug HP for a refund for Vista (or, if they won't do that, mebbe an "upgrade" to XP ... not that I'd use it :)).
Read my stuff.
I really don't understand why you people care so much about this. I mean who gives a shit about how the latest OS from Microsoft is perceived from Dutch consumers. It's like how much do we care about how the steering wheel of the last Volvo car model is designed. Things have changed, Everybody I know that care about computers now don't run neither Vista nor XP. My mother runs Vista.
It's harder to OEM a 500 dollar version, and the people who pays 500 dollar probably wouldn't had wanted a basic version...
Also yes it's new, but if drivers suck it's the hardware makers problem, but they can always say that the product doesn't work with Vista, big deal? If the whole computer suck the manufacturer should probably not have shipped with Vista.
I just bought a tablet PC and unfortunately I couldn't get it with XP Tablet Edition, instead it came with Vista Home Premium and after one week I already hate it (Actually I hated it after one day). Its random behavior, its intrusiveness and its theft of resources are just a few of the things that are driving me crazy.
I have impression that digg users generally more tolerant of Vista (or even pro-Vista) than slashdotters. I'm wondering if what I've seen just random fluctuation or the reason is that /. and digg have different demographics. The diggers are predominantly Windows users, but that still not explain why they prefer Vista to XP.
Totally agreed. 3.1 was a leap ahead of DOS, 95 and 98 were easier to use then 3.1 and had the taskbar, 2000 was decent, although I never ran it when it was new, just on pre-existing machines, XP was, in my opinion, the best version of Windows, sure it wasn't the best it could be, but it kept the same learning curve as 95,98 and 2000, if you could use 95 you could use XP, It was that, that was keeping Linux from leaping ahead of Windows, now though Vista throws it totally out the windows, if you knew how to use XP, you still have to learn a new OS, so why pay $50 (OEM) to over $200, (Ultimate) when you can get the same level of functionality with Linux thats free, almost always gets better (mostly the code gets optimized, applications run faster, bugs get fixed....) unlike Windows where the next version seems more sluggish then the other version not to mention how easily you can get spyware/viruses just by visiting a website with IE. Most Windows "Everyday" users won't ever mess up Linux enough to even put it in an unusable state, the most that can usually happen is your home directory gets wiped. Thats it. With Windows even a simple hardware upgrade can give you a Blue screen of death (Once on Vista I got one because my Wireless card wasn't pushed in all the way....) on Linux that hasn't ever happened to me. I was happy with Windows until Vista, that just made me jump to Ubuntu even faster,
MS has alienated its customers, the age of MS is passed, like the age of IBM before it, now the age of Linux looms before us, a world where you can actually get the OS that you want
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Who says that the AC has a gripe? It's simple economics, as you point out. The AC has a choice of using an OS with which existing H/W works or use a different OS that offers no apparent advantage but that forces expensive H/W replacement. AFAICS it's a no-brainer.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I'm not, unless I get a decent computer - I'm an XP user myself. Still, a victim might not be the best words if one wants to stay unbiased.
If Vista has worse performance than XP, and causes a computer to be unable to perform as it had or would have under XP, an argument can be made that the computer in toto is unfit for the general purpose. Depending on the specifics of the case, it could be a good argument, or a bad one.
After all, I am strangely colored.
The biggest issue I have with vista, it's got nothing new for me. DOS -> Win98, yay the computer is more usable, as much as I love dos a GUI is nice Win98 -> 2K, yay I can have different accounts for other users now 2K -> XP, yay some of my older games are happier with this Xp -> Vista ??? Want to sell me something, actually improve on your previous offering.
Windows XP didn't offer anything that Windows 2000 didn't already offer.
I see this get posted on Slashdot a lot, but it's just not true.
Things Windows XP has that 2000 doesn't include system restore, driver rollback, fast user switching, a built-in firewall, an encrypted file system that supported multiple users at once (2k's only worked for a single user at once), smart card support, data excecution prevention, better compatibility with pre-2k applications, remote assistance, a remote desktop server in the professional version, and more. Not all (or even any) of those features might be useful to you, but they are there, and there are people who use them.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Yeah, yeah. I love flame wars. But seriously, why do people even bother with Vista? What's more important: the glossy surface or your apps? What the 'puter looks like or what it does? My buddy Kristofer is a fanatical Windows user who recently bought a big ass HP laptop, a Pavillion dv9000 17" I believe, sort of like the B-52 of laptops, while I'm a happy owner of a Mac OS X 10.4 and MacBook Pro 15.4". Kris is already having problems and glitches with his very expensive and super-heavy laptop, and wants to go back to XP, but OS X or Linux isn't even on the radar screen for him, no matter what happens and no matter how much trouble Windows causes. I have given up trying to show the trouble-free existence on the other side of the operating system fence, because Kris simply does not have the brain cells or the DNA set-up to support Mac OS X or Ubuntu, Debian etc. Please explain to me what's going on, and how did so many people end in this Dark Age of computing, and why do they stay there out of their own free will?
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
I hate to say it, but I fell into the Vista trap. I was having some issues with XP and thought it would be a great time to upgrade. I have been a loyal MS customer since I switched from from an old Tandy box to Win 3.1, big jump. I use my machine as a recording studio, and anything that made it more 'mac' like is bound to be better. That said I went to a large retailer and bought Vista. The first thing I noticed was it wouldn't take my product key. That's fine I thought and finished the install. The second thing I noticed is that it is freaking huge. That in turn made a decent running box pretty slow. Third aggravating point was that it treated me like an idiot. I am no programmer by any means, but I cut my teeth on the first CoCo computers from Tandy in the 80's. I understand a little more than Vista was giving me credit for. Long story short, I never could get the store bought product key to work. MS stated that the copy I bought was for upgrade purposes only, and must be a pirated copy. They stated that I could not do a clean boot with the software I purchased and I owed them another $150. This really vexed me. I am now a happy Linux user. After trying a few OS is settled on Unbuntu. I love it. I have also converted two colleges with my live CD. I keep a spare in my car just for such occasion. FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mock surprise! Really, do you live under a rock? People don't complain because they don't know they have easy alternatives that work. They just use what they are given until someone shows them something better. Vista's pains have been documented at length here and you can see them for real if you watch what your Vista using peers have to put up with.
Vista has been out for nearly a year and the consensus opinion is that it sucks in all the usual M$ ways and then some. Lots of the breakage is intentional: M$ wants to own your digital life and is doing it's best to force you onto their media player, their photo managers as well as their crappy productivity software. You don't have to take my word for it because twitter made a nice log of other people's opinions. The M$ PR people really hate it, so you will probably be put on the terrorist no fly list for just looking at it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
well, some of the features you mentionned werent there at launch (for example the firewall). Though thats more "under the hood" features, and for a lot of users (especially for those LOOKING to trash Windows, or for averahe home users, obviously), it doesn't count. Vista has a completly crazy amount of those (a lot more than XP has over 2k), but when comparing OSs in a list like that, usually (not saying I agree), only the major, obvious changes count.
Make of that what you will.
This is what Microsoft wants. Users are told ask for XP instead of Vista - which doesn't really change the amount of money Microsoft receives in any way. Then, in a few years, Microsoft stops supporting XP and forces everyone to buy Vista. So, in the long run, Microsoft loves the "buy XP instead of Vista" hoopla. They're going to double their profits.
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
I don't care about the latest Volvo steering wheel. Only the rear wheel drives... and the C70 drop heads... are worth a damn.
I've yet to hear anything critical about Vista that wasn't either ill-informed, overblown, or complete guesswork. My own personal experiences of using it clearly do not represent those of the various people complaining about it. Remember we don't hear much from the "it's working fine for me" crowd, as they have no reason to tell anyone.
And as for it being a cube heater, you'd have to try pretty hard to be even more incorrect. The machine I've got is a Dell Vostro 200, one of those slim boxes, and it runs practically silently all the time, and doesn't kick out much more heat than any other PC I've used (even Linux ones *shock*). Compare it with the hulking great G5 sitting next to it, which sounds and feels like a Harrier with engine difficulty, and you'd understand just how quiet and cool this machine is.
Yes, it needs more drivers... yes... it needs to have the DRM ripped out of it... but give it a try before you hate it.
:)
Let me see... you suggest I plunk my hard-earned dollars to TRY OUT a piece of OS that everyone is saying is crap JUST FOR THE SLIGHT POSSIBILITY that I might like it? Thanks, but I'll pass
Good lord. Most of the things you said are useless, and the useful things are available with third party software.
System restore doesn't help, it's a problem in itself. Driver rollback is a nice feature but even when I had XP I never had to use that, what kind of faulty hardware and drivers do you have to think this is a great feature ? you could always install the old version without that. The built-in firewall didn't appear before a service pack it hardly counts against windows 2000 when XP was shipping and new. Smart card support ? what are you smoking ? 2000 already supported them. Remote assistance is a funny crippled remote desktop system, you can get better third party software for, exactly, FREE, and it's called UltraVNC. Remote desktop in the pro version ? who cares, UltraVNC is better.
Be serious, XP didn't have anything worth mentioning over 2000. It was a funny, stupid blue GUI for the masses and that's all.
Vista performance is slower even with aero turned off and this is not an opinion, it has been benchmarked:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/29/xp-vs-vista/page4.html
that's not counting the numerous vista performance bugs, nor the well know usability issues (allow, continue).. which effectively slows down your productivity
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow, ignorant much? Vista isn't "breaking" hardware, it's just that some third-party software was so poorly designed, taking advantage of the flaws present in the average XP install (everything from assuming the user was always a full admin to just going ahead and loading kernel modules for any damn thing like DRM or virus scanning) that when MS fixed these issues, a handful of crap software didn't work (or, in the case of programs expecting admin privileges, didn't work without a UAC prompt) anymore.
/dev/random such that the major source of randomness a friend of mine was using was no longer considered, and he started getting really poor performance in one of his programs).
As for OSes not breaking things just because they're new, what alternate software dimension are you from and can I go there? Old drivers always get replaced in time (although Vista will happily run most XP drivers, the exception being network-related ones since the new network stack has a different NDIS). Software gets updated to use new libraries and kernel features. People make mistakes (there was a release of Ubuntu with no support at all for ATI video cards, as a random semi-recent example), people move on to new and better platforms (contrary to what some people think, even with Classic an OS X user could NOT run all programs for prior versions of MacOS, just as there are DOS programs out there that won't run on NT), and sometimes people don't even know why something changed (a Linux kernel update once changed
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
We complain about the Vista versions like Ultimate because the competition is giving the whole shebang, for only one price. Mac OS X 10.4 is on the Apple Store for 129$, everything included. The Family pack is for 200$ and can upgrade FIVE macs ! Linux distributions have much more useful stuff for any self respecting geek than Vista Home will ever give. Using Vista or XP Home feels like being crippled. Vista Ultimate is way too overpriced. Its price is higher than OSX+iLife+iWork. 287 $ versus 320 $ for Vista ultimate. Who are you joking ?
Well, please by all means... be ignorant.
It is not a crap os. You dont have to plunk your hard-earned dollars to try out the os. You can install the dam thing for free for 30-days, or feel free to DL a pirated version, or test run one in a store.
Not everyone is saying its crap. Its just you have chosen to side with those that do, which is odd, since you have not even tried the OS.
Its probably the best windows OS yet. The security is better, the fact that finally we have a supported 64-bit windows OS is a godsend. XP64 was great but just not supported by hardware manufacturers.
Whatever you think of Vista, its still easier to use than linux and has more software AND it is better than XP security wise. It's not as lean as XP, but i find it convient that now we speak about XP as being the better windows, when years ago, the same people bitched about XP compared to 2000, and 2000 to NT4..
I completly agree with you. However, I've rarely read people put it that way (even though it is the only logical way of seeing it). Its always "OMG! Vista is so much worse than XP! Its slower and more expensive!!!". And no, it isn't.
As a sidenote, MacOSX would be a heck of a good deal, and worth every freagin cents, if the price of the OS wasn't "hidden" in the hardware. Sure you can upgrade and upgrade and upgrade, but Apple makes money on the hardware, thats why the software can be cheap. The day it is possible (read: easy) and "legal" (read: not against their EULA) to run MacOSX on most pieces of random hardware, is the day MS will have to heavily consider slashing their price to oblivion to be able to compete. MacOSX is for all practical purpose "free" (200$ for 5 computers upgrade is for all practical purpose insignificant to most people who can afford that many Macs, thats why I say free).
Totally agree with Linux, but Vista Home and Linux are in markets that virtually don't compete whatsoever.
even the average consumer doesn't like Vista, not just the geeks. In short you have restated pherthyl's point, and added nothing to the discussion.
learn to read
Well of course, with the qualifier of you having heard it, and online doesn't count, then that cuts out a lot of feedback. Doesn't mean there aren't tons of problems with Vista (I've had it installed since it was released, but it's completely unusable).
You do realise that most of the "advances" you tout existed on various other systems for years before Windows.
And I'm not talking about some exotic "spend $$$$$ because you're a massive business with a budget to match" - many were available to the average end user. For instance, in the UK Acorn had 32-bit processors (well, 24 bits in some parts of the CPU and 32 bits in others) in 1987, complete with a printer driver system similar to what's in Windows, a bar showing programs and disk drives along the bottom of the screen. About the only big thing it did not have which you would expect on something today was protected memory support.
Sun managed to do it, and they had a hardware change as well between Sparc32 and Sparc64.
Digital managed it with OpenVMS.
IBM seemed to do OK with their AS/400 range - even with a major architecture change thrown in for good measure.
Nice parody of the old "Macs are slow" troll
Markets that virtually don't compete ? well, I always paid my windows tax until my last desktop. My last desktop was windows-free. I had enough of the bullshit. Now i'm a linux convert, I even learned how to live with nearly every apps i use being console/text applications because the mouse gave me painful RSI (repetitive strain injury) unlike the keyboard. My firefox has the Hit a Hint extension so I never touch the mouse. Ever. I use shortcuts for everything and the hit a hint extension let me "click" the links without a pointer, just by typing two or three letters. Of course, my text editor is vim, not this damn son of satan named Emacs, its keyboard shortcuts could certainly give me more RSI pains than even heavy mouse using. Windows is expensive for what it is. Yes Apple makes money on the hardware but even taking that into account, I do think the whole shebang makes for a better value than a windows PC. I'm not a mac user and I don't personally own a mac, i prefer linux and the command line but if I had to recommend a computer to a novice i'd tell him to buy a mac and stay away from the windows hell.
(A) Windows should be secure.
(B) Windows should be 100% compatible with legacy applications.
Pick one.
Huh? Win2K's EFS works for multiple users. Although it wasn't until XP SP1 that EFS was no longer trivially crackable...
Oh, and in your list of enhancements in XP, you forgot ClearType.
Huh? Win2K's EFS works for multiple users.
;)
;-)
What I mean by that is that XP can let multiple users access a single encrypted file (or directory), which, as far as I'm aware, you can't do in 2k. (but maybe they added that in in an update I don't know about)
Oh, and in your list of enhancements in XP, you forgot ClearType.
That's true, but mentioning that probably would've just caused somebody to flame me about how they hate "blurry" fonts.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
I don't know who you're talking to, but everyone I know that has recently purchased a new machine with Vista pre-installed has had issues. For example, one individual who just bought a new Dell laptop with Vista on it found that after the last round of updates Internet Explorer refuses to run. Period. And that's the least of the complaints I've heard.
But, regardless. This all comes down to people expecting Microsoft (of all companies) to get something right the first time around. Microsoft never has, and never will. It's expected that you have to wait until at least the first Service Pack (or whatever they're called now) before you buy into the latest greatest from Microsoft. Consequently, the big issue here is not that Vista has problems (of course it does) but that Microsoft tried to shove it down our throats by obsolescing Windows XP before Vista had become sufficiently mature to replace it.
I mean, when Windows XP was released yes, it had issues, but at least I could use my Windows 2000 hardware drivers with it, so I didn't need to buy new peripherals. I could use my existing computer system (actually, as I remember I did add some more RAM.)
I figure in about one to two years, Vista will be an operating system worth taking a look at, but I want Microsoft to work out the major bugs first, and I'll wait until the hardware companies update all their drivers. I'm not in a hurry.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Steam (the gaming platform) has a stats page where you can compare your setup to those of other gamers...I was surprised, if not amused, to see that 90% are still running XP. I personally won't touch vista. It's a DRM-infested cesspool.
Perhaps the BSOD jokes will stop when the BSODs stop happening?
I can count the number of times I've had a kernel panic on Linux, and they were all at boot, and all due to a misconfigured GRUB pointing to the wrong partition as root.
No tyrant thrives when every subject says no.
As usual, you pick one point of mine to argue with and then ignore the rest, then absolutely fail to provide compelling evidence to argue the one point that you picked out. Good job.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Because it runs more of my existing software than Linux or OS/X, doesn't crash (yes, really), looks and feels better than XP, and runs just as well as XP on my hardware?
Look, I love linux as much as the next guy (FreeBSD more so), but until I can run the games I want to play on Linux, it's not a starter as my sole OS. And yes, I'm a Transgaming subscriber, and no it doesn't work with a lot of the games I want.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
looks like it's time for this old jem http://web.mit.edu/dzych/www/FunFiles/COMP.OS.Beer Maby it's time to update it.
it was like that when I got here.. I wasen't here when that happened... second shift musta done that....
What would you rather it do with that RAM, just leave it unused? You do realise it can dynamically allocate RAM for use out of it's cache, right? In the meantime, it's speeding up your disk access...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
How could you not? There has been a LOT of coverage about what people don't like about it.
Indeed there has. Unfortunately most of that "coverage" is either made-up by people who have never actually used Vista, or is blatantly false. To use a few examples:
* "High hardware requirements" -> Vista runs quite usably on my ~6 year old P3 (with modest and cheap upgrades) and on a ~3 year old Precision M60 laptop. Certainly better than OS X runs on equivalently aged Macs.
* "DRM" -> irrelevant and inactive unless you're using DRM-encumbered media, in which case you're limited by the same restrictions that all players have (be they software or appliance).
* "UAC prompts" -> I think I see maybe one of these a week (can't actually remember the last one), and never in an unexpected fashion, or one that doesn't also happen in OS X or Linux.
* "The UI has changed" -> the changes are cosmetic. The fundamental UI features and concepts (widgets, task switching and windows management models, program launching, etc) remain the same as they were in *Windows 95*.
The sheer volume of FUD spewing out of the anti-Microsoft brigade about Vista is staggering - I was expecting it to be bad, but it really has been something else. It makes Microsoft's comments about Linux look like accurate, respectful, constructive criticism.
I've probably installed Linux about as many times as my /. ID, and love it to bits. But that doesn't change what vista is. It's a step in the RIGHT direction from microsoft. Most of the shit people bitch about with XP has been attended to. Sure resource usage is up. Resources are cheap - if you want to keep running your Pentium 2, then don't fucking upgrade to Vista and expect it to work.
AS to an OS being extremely lightweight and being simply for controlling hardware - i used to agree. However, in this day and age, hardware is far, far cheaper than programmer time and effort. An OS needs to support APIs to make programming easier (eg, OpenGL, OpenAL, DirectX, X11, .net, whatever). Do you *need* them to program with? Of course not. But, why spend 90% of your programming effort re-inventing the wheel, when you could use a built in library, take 90% less programming time, 90% less debugging time, and reap the shared memory benefits when running alongside other apps?
This is why operating systems are getting "fatter". Linux is as well - just try and run a modern dist on a 486 with 4mb of ram (my first linux box) and see where you get.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
i find this telling. you are comparing an operating system patched together by a couple of nerds in their mothers' basements to run on hardware the largest and best funded monopoly in the world has spent untold millions and billions making it impossible for any other operating system to use with a product developed over the course of 6 years by 60 thousand workers at this monopoly.
what i find telling is that you can compare them. maybe computing actually isn't that hard. maybe a few good people can write good quality software. maybe we would have a hell of a lot more choice and more understanding of what our computers actually do if there wasn't one company there deliberately spending millions muddying the waters and trying to make computing look more like alchemy, phrenology or astrology.
Although the consumer's union asked for a copy of Windows XP that they were legally entitled to, their offer was refused for a few reasons.
1.) The license states that while Windows Vista owners are entitled to use Windows XP, they are required to seek their own media.
2.) The media itself costs money - packaging, CDs, manuals, etc. may be cheap, by they are not free
3.) Microsoft DOES sell copies of the media cheaply without license keys.
So, the consumer's union should have either obtained a XP CD from a friend, downloaded it somewhere, or buy the Windows XP install disc without a licensing key. The latter of the list does exist; I've recently been to Fry's and saw an OEM Windows XP install CD w/o license key for sale for only $5. Should they have called up Microsoft and be denied a Windows XP license key should there be a problem. In any case, it would not be illegal for them to copy a friend's CD or download an ISO.
Although I usually don't support Microsoft, it is very important to note the packaging costs. Just like how people distributing GPL'ed code can request a nominal fee for distributing the source code, Microsoft should be allowed to request a nominal fee for sending the Windows XP install medium.
Things Windows XP has that 2000 doesn't include system restore, driver rollback, fast user switching, a built-in firewall, an encrypted file system that supported multiple users at once (2k's only worked for a single user at once), smart card support, data excecution prevention, better compatibility with pre-2k applications, remote assistance, a remote desktop server in the professional version, and more. Not all (or even any) of those features might be useful to you, but they are there, and there are people who use them.
Of that list there is only one that offers any value to me: remote desktop.
You missed a couple that I do value: ability to lock the task bar (no more accidentally dragging it somewhere, tab completion on the command line and decent wireless tools.
meh
I have OS X running on my panasonic laptop so I am not paying the hidden part of the cost. Also, I live in China so I was able to buy the patched version just like it was genuine(from an Apple reseller).
OSx86 FTW
The day it is possible (read: easy) and "legal" (read: not against their EULA) to run MacOSX on most pieces of random hardware, is the day MS will have to heavily consider slashing their price to oblivion to be able to compete
Apple only sells upgrades for OS-X not full products (granted they don't directly enforce this but there is no real point in doing so given that it is enforced as a side effect of the hardware lock). If apple ever sold full copies to use on other manufacturers hardware I bet they would cost a lot more than the upgrades they sell now.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
That Vista performance is slower is just common sense. XP performance is slower than W2K. I recently installed (for gads knows what reason) NT 4.0 on an old '486 Toshiba Laptop with 32M of RAM. It ran pretty decently on that laptop. Until I installed NT4 Service Pack 6, which bogged it waaay down for some reason that I'm sure was well documented a decade or so back.
Microsoft OSes bloat and bloat and always have. They really don't have a good overall design. Just tons and tons and tons of fairly good programming talent capable of tossing all kinds of new stuff into each release.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I'm not in a hurry.
and as a geek you have that luxury, you can make sure you either buy PCs with XP or with an edition of vista that allows downgrading. You almost certainly have access to suitable media for excercising your downgrade rights (though MS has loosened up a bit on this point recently). If you are so inclined you probablly have the skill to avoid most of the pitfalls of running pirate XP.
Ordinary home users don't! they go out to the computer shop and buy a PC. It comes with vista home basic or home premium. There only legit option to get back to XP is to buy it full retail (upgrade copies of vista don't come with downgrade rights so you can't just upgrade to buisness to get downgrade rights). They are stuck between a rock and a hard place, they either have to deal with vista or spend a lot of money (about £150 for XP home plus they have to find someone to set it up for them, a service they may have to pay for) to go bck to XP.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Make of that what you will. Totally agree!
The first thing I was told, when I askem my microsoftie friend what was better in Vista then in XP?
He said: "Look how easy it is to setup a network..."
I was WTF? I do it once, twice a year... By magic of DHCP built-in-to my router!
not the party line around here for some reason, but it's the truth
XP=2K+more bloat+a few marginally usefull features+support for some newer types of hardware+activation crap (which could be got arround by using a pirate copy of the corporate edition but MS targeted people who did that with WGA)
so overall better in some ways worse in others.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
If you think that the breakage problems in vista are bad, then it's a shame you were using linux back in the mid to late 90s...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yeah, yeah. I love flame wars. But seriously, why do people even bother with Vista?
because most people feel tied into windows either because they don't want to learn something new or because they have software that ties them in or both. Apple's range of desktop hardware is also terrible (basically if your requirements are even slightly out of the ordinary then often the only mac that can meet them is the very expensive mac pro) and apple doesn't do low end in either the laptop or desktop markets.
Walk into a store like PC world (for those not in the UK PC world is the main chain of bricks and mortar computer retailers here) and you will find that nearly all the machines come with vista, usually the editions of vista that don't come with downgrade rights. By the time the user finds out that vista is more trouble than it is worth there only legitimate option for downgrading is to buy XP retail and then they have to find someone to set it up for them (which often involves a lot of hunting for drivers). Sure there is the odd mac arround but nothing to make the person who went in shopping for a PC think about getting one instead.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I've been using Vista on a secondary machine for a few months now. It's a very high-end box, quad-core CPU, 3GB of RAM, 8800 GTS video card, and of course Vista runs great on it. What wouldn't?
I've had a few minor issues with Vista, most of which Microsoft has already offered fixes for. I haven't found anything significantly better, but other than the issues that have been fixed, I haven't found anything worse either.
I'm not sure why people would want XP over Vista, unless they need to support old hardware that they already have or are buying computers under about $700 total price.
Of course, there's a vibrant low-end computer market, and the lack of XP availability would probably hurt it quite a bit. Or push people to use Linux. We'll see.
Perhaps the unavailability of XP will push the $1,000 computer market to Windows? Consider also that the cost of the OS is proportionately higher at the lower end. That extra $130 from not buying Windows could mean a quad-core CPU instead of a dual or 2GB instead of 1GB for your Linux box.
It could happen.
Do you have any evidence? Or do you think that everyone who disagrees with you must be a shill?
Vista really is a different case. I haven't met anyone that's satisfied with it, and I've met a lot of mom'n'pop end users that were pretty vocal in their criticism of it.
Anecdotal? Possibly. I could have a superhuman ability to attract people that have problems with Vista, or perhaps people that use the WiFi in cafes are demographically more prone to disliking Vista than everyone else, but I'm inclined to believe this is an indication of a larger trend.
well, some of the features you mentionned werent there at launch (for example the firewall).
Yes, it was.
That Vista performance is slower is just common sense. XP performance is slower than W2K. I recently installed (for gads knows what reason) NT 4.0 on an old '486 Toshiba Laptop with 32M of RAM. It ran pretty decently on that laptop. Until I installed NT4 Service Pack 6, which bogged it waaay down for some reason that I'm sure was well documented a decade or so back.
This means nothing. An older Linux kernel will also run far better on older hardware than newer.
Try modern hardware - a quad-core machine with 4G of RAM and put it under heavy load. 2000 will be (much) better than NT4, XP will be better than Windows 2000 and Vista will be better than XP. *That* is "common sense". If you were developing an OS today, why would you bother optimising for a hardware platform any less powerful than 2 CPU cores and a couple of gigabyte of RAM ?
Moreover, after Vista being on the market for a year or so, I still haven't seen a copy of it running _anywhere_. I am an IT professional, yet none of my customers, colleagues, or friends are running it. Noone wants it either - there is no buzz about this great new operating system. At work it hasn't even been mentioned (disclaimer: I do work in what is primarily a Linux shop, so this is maybe not such a surprise). And my main customer asked about it once and I advised to hold off for now (the ability to run separate from the internet, not to mention drivers for a shitload of obsolete equipment, are both critical to them). Turns out they are perfectly happy to not spend any money and not run the risk of upsetting their systems.
Delicious, isn't it?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Yea, it's pretty sad. I sure wish I had that option when I was shopping around a few weeks ago for a version of Windows XP.
Five clicks to set compatibility mode is five too many. If the program needs to run in compatibility, Vista should be able to make the determination and run any necessary compatibility by itself, without bothering me and without causing me the delay of the five clicks.
If you need to set a compatibility mode by hand, a Meta-key(+letter)+Click would be an acceptable solution to automatically select XP xompatibility mode.
60-70 percent of Apple's computer sales are laptops: Macbook and MacBook Pro machines. I know this because I work for a major reseller. The rest is Mac Pros and iMacs.
There are two main categories of customers: professionals (music makers, video editors, graphics people, programmers, architects, photographers) and home users (students, retired people, switchers, everybody else).
Desktop computing and laptops is the second division, which creates a matrix consisting of four parts: pro laptops (MacBook Pros), home laptops (MacBooks), pro desktop (Mac Pros) and home desktop (iMacs, and to a lesser extent, Mac minis).
People who need raw power will buy the Mac Pro, and it isn't very expensive for someone who's running a business. The iMac provides a lot of power and value for the home user. Also, there are BTO options when you order any Mac. You can add faster hard drives, graphics cards etc. So maybe there is no need for an intermediate machine, or at least not a market for it.
But yes, you are right: it's easier just to go with the herd, go to a large electronics warehouse and get some cheap Windows Vista laptop. I might do that too next time, to be honest, but I would wipe the hard drive at once and install Ubuntu or Debian. Much nicer and easier. I have personally no use for Windows.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Since I've been looking for a gaming-quality laptop, I've been paying specific interest in GPU chipsets & 3DMark benchmark values. In one magazine I read, they mentioned the fact that in order to benchmark Vista properly, they had to ***LEAVE THE LAPTOP TO SETTLE DOWN FOR 30 MINUTES AFTER BOOTING*** before even thinking about accurate benchmark figures because of what Vista is doing after boot-up.
If that is actually a true fact then I'm thoroughly amazed.
Incidentally, I settled on a Dell XPS M1710 in the end which Dell would not sell me with XP - but which I found new from another dealer with XP on it at a considerably discounted price.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Surely when Windows XP is no longer available, the unofficial Windows compatibility mode for old hardware will be to run the computer in Linux and only use Vista when the is no software solution available for what you are trying to achieve. And of course if you want to play games, you will probably be buying a Wii instead of a computer anyway.
Except Microsoft picked neither.
I really hate to see generalised sweeping statements & despite criticising the poster for never having used Vista, you don't sound to me as though you've used Linux much.
Firstly, let's get rid of this "easier to use" myth. The GUIs in Windows, Gnome & KDE are similar enough that the average Joe Sixpack could adapt to using any of them relatively easily - features like "Save", "Cut", "Paste", etc. work pretty much the same across the board. Sure, Joe Sixpack has problems at the Linux BASH prompt, but in my experience he also has problems putting in wireless keys, creating a new partition, configuring permissions, etc. in all those nice graphical Windows tools also.
I'm happy to accept that more people "know" Windows than they do Linux but no-one leaves the womb with an instinctual Windows knowledge - they still learnt from scratch at some point and it would not take any person longer to learn the basics in Linux than it does in Windows.
Secondly, I think you mean "more COMMERCIAL software" rather than just "more software". You seem to forget the wealth of FOSS applications out there that run both within Linux & Windows. Sure, a lot of it is less mature or feature-rich than commercial counterparts but I would argue that, for example, OpenOffice has more than enough features and usability for the 95% of MS Office users who don't get into VB macros and the advance MS Office integration stuff.
Please remember that most commercial software vendors capitalise on the fact that most Joe Sixpacks find it easier to part with a few hundred pounds/dollars/euros for a shrinkwrapped software box than having to themselves go find, download & install free software from the Internet.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Vista isn't "breaking" hardware, it's just that some third-party software was so poorly designed, taking advantage of the flaws present in the average XP install (everything from assuming the user was always a full admin to just going ahead and loading kernel modules for any damn thing like DRM or virus scanning) that when MS fixed these issues, a handful of crap software didn't work (or, in the case of programs expecting admin privileges, didn't work without a UAC prompt) anymore.
Some "third party software?" You mean like some of Microsoft's own applications?
Its always "OMG! Vista is so much worse than XP! Its slower and more expensive!!!". And no, it isn't.
How do you figure? Slower: check. More expensive: check. And then there's the bloat: Vista needs 8x as much memory as XP and needs fifteen frikkin gigabytes of hard drive space. That is pathetic.
So you're saying that a modern bloated OS is a better platform for running the new bloated application software, and that throwing a quad-core processor and several GB of RAM at the solution proves this?
If I were developing an OS today, it would depend on whether I was in collusion with companies like Dell and Intel to sell new hardware. If I were, I would certainly bloat up my OS with as much processor-chewing bullshit as possible. The little bits of animated paper that streamed across the dialog box while copying files would contain the 3-D rendered actual content of the files being copied, for instance. Why settle for the usual inane bullshit eyecandy bloat from Microsoft if we can do better?
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
Maybe MS should just treat Vista as "New Coke" Windows and release Windows XP SP3 as "Windows Classic".
So why does a consumer group want to victimize the consumer a second time - they've already been victimized by Vista, now by DRM'ed XP?
I have used linux plenty. I still even have my slackware 1.0 book and disc. I've run redhat for extended periods of time on my home computers and i ALWAYS found myself hitting walls, usually dependency problems, or poor media player support etc. Having recently tried Fiesty Fawn, I quickly found out that it absolutely hated my ati x1550 and would not run in desktop resolutions higher than 1280x800. That sucks considering i have an HP 30inch monitor that runs at 2560x1600. BTW I tried it right at the time i was building my quadcore workstation for home and i was able to run vista side by side with ubuntu on 2 different pcs. I was going to try to stick it out with ubuntu as my web/email/fucking around pc... but i couldnt even get the dam thing to identify my videocard modes right. Editing the cfg did nothing for me either.
:) And it is a usuable OS for some people... But for most, its not worth the headaches.
I could not get compiz to work at all, and i really wanted to try it out. It bitched about my videocard lacking something. Which is ridiculous.
I've been into computers for 20+ years. This stuff isnt that new to me, but Linux is a headache that i'm often not willing enough to put up with, because in the end there are hardly any apps i require on the OS. Most of my apps run in windows, i'm a professional 3d animator/modeller for games, special fx etc, and i'm also a pro photographer on the side. Linux offers NO solutions for my field. Yes linux has softimage, maya, houdini and renderman, but both softimage and maya run better in windows, and all of the other accompanying applications that compliment my workflow are on windows only. I'm not an IT guy anymore. I was when i was a kid, when fucking around with computers in everyway was fun and desirable. These days i work, i have my interests, I have my areas of expertise that I excell at, and i expect my OS to be transparent and work so i can get to work. I dont want to tinker with Linux. I want it to work... and again... at the end of the day.. the apps i need are not there. So why am i going to bother?
I'm not against linux, I've time and time again given it a chance, hoping to see it improve. It certainly has since the old Slackware1.0 days
The Gui's in windows, Gnome, KDE are similar enough that the average joe sixpack could use them. YES. you are right in that statement. However Vista works with my graphics cards seamlessly. I do not need to dig into some cfg because for some reason the ati driver doesnt want to do anything other than 640x480, 1024x768, 1280x800.
It just works.
Yes Commercial software is what i'm talking about, because FOSS software is rarely of quality and lacks the funds to become refined, streamlined and tailored to specific tasks. Thats not to say FOSS authors are not talented, they just have limited time, resources and scope. Gimp vs Photoshop. Blender vs Softimage XSI or MAYA.
Dont even start me on Open Office, Its primitive at best. Office 2007 is incredible to use, and has a nice ui to do it in. Open Office functions and is usable, but again this goes back to the point of "refinement" or lack there of, due to limited resources and scope.
Commercial vendors capitalize on features and refinement, and not the reasons you put forth.
There is a huge difference in the interfaces for Blender vs Softimage XSI. Because for years, Softimage has focused on UI refinement, powerful features, streamlining workflows, and providing killer tools... yes at a price. But thats what price helps do, it helps fund a team that is capable of refining their software.
Blender on the other hand, is a collection of great tools, within an interface that is a mess. New features, often very good features are added, but are more so, thrown into the package, rather than tailored in. They dont have luxory of refinement, but they do have the necessity and knowledge to implement new tools. OSS is great at that but it often fails to compare to commercially funded software products in refinement. Its often the difference between weekend hobby vs carear. You can only have so much time and resources to devote to free projects. Commercial software excels at refinement.
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> It was the first "usable" version of Windows. It did things that were arguably miraculous.
You mean *on a PC*. Win3.1 was only miraculous if you came from DOS. Look at the other players around that time (Win3.1 came out in '92, Win3.0 in '90), such as Acorn, Mac, Amiga, Atari: they all had all those miraculous features *for years* (I don't mention the unix variants for they were not affordable then). Heck, they even allowed you to create a folder within a desktop folder, that 3.11 did not allow you to do, IIRC. I had both Amigas and Win3.1 boxes at home and I was using a Sun Sparc at work. It was painful to use the Win3.1 box. There was nothing new there, except for those who already were not used to anything but MS at the time. Win3.1 was a 16-bit OS, all the others I mentioned were 32 bit *and* had been for at least 5 years...
When I bought my Porsche 914 and realized it was a piece of crap suped-up Volkswagen, I demanded that Porsche give me the previous year's 911 Turbo instead.
I bought a computer from Acer (I recommend none of you ever do). I contacted them outlining their legal obligation to me and received this email.
Regarding your enquiry, We can do this however you need to pay the carrier and assessment fees which is £41.13. Once we have received the laptop and made sure the operating system is no longer on it we will return your machine to your with a refund cheque of £50 Yes, that's right. They wanted me to post them my whole computer (at my expense) to their service centre, which would charge me a £41.13 for assessment. Hah!Twelve emails later, we've not progressed far. They're now offered me £61.12, no assessment fees. But they still expect me to post my whole computer (which costs ~£15 each way, uninsured delivery). I've told them I've erased Windows (in fact I've even filmed and photographed the affair), but oh yes, and they still want the whole computer posted, and they say they must remove the hard-drive and erase ALL DATA. No thank you, I'm using it! Of course, the whole assessment centre thing is pointless, because anyone could have made a copy of windows operating system to CD (in fact, the computer was set up to do this on first boot), sent their computer to have the hard-drive wiped, and then restored Windows on its return. This whole thing is a ludicrous policy concocted to escape their legal right to the consumer.
I am now at university and no longer have the time to continue pursuing the refund. (£61.12 of a £350 computer = 17.5%). Acer customer support are the worst I have ever experienced, I would never buy from them again. Other Acer users have had similar experiences. (If you receive your computer faulty on purchase, they will try and charge you £41.12). Had I the time, I would like to continue this with consumer groups, and then on legal grounds, and encourage a large boycott of Acer's product.
Do not expect a refund. Even if you are prepared to work hard, you can get nowhere if your manufacturer are as underhanded as Acer.
And for the record, it hasn't been "years" since Apple has had an affordable mid-range tower. They were discontinued in August of 2006 (with the introduction of the Intel Mac line). I doubt Apple will ever make another consumer level tower, because Apple has a long history of expediating the obsolescence of outdated computer stuff (5 1/2" floppy, 3.25" floppy, the serial bus, for example). Everytime Apple does something like that people say "Apple is CRAZY! What are they doing!?" Then a year later, everyone is doing the same thing as Apple. I'm not saying the tower is going away, because there are a lot of tinkerer's out there. But it probably IS going away from the Mac market, because there AREN'T a lot of tinkerers out there.
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There are some programs that if you run the installer, UAC will kick in and ask for administrator privileges to perform the install. Then when you run it. That program will be the bane of your existence.
However....if you would have right clicked on the installer and selected "Run As Administrator". The program would run fine.
And no, going back and reinstalling does not solve the problem.
One of the sweet joys of my life is getting to heckle my boss while he is dealing with a Vista issue while he is explaining the gayitry of Linux to me.
vi +
I only ran Vista on my laptop at work for a month. The idea was that I would see what end users would deal with on that dark and dreaded day we start using Vista (unless SP1 fixes a lot of issues). Which meant I had to run it without turning off UAC. Being a power user administering a network. I saw a LOT of UAC. Notwithstanding, my end users would have seen it several times a day. This is not even including our Quickbooks 2005 users. We would have to pay $7,500.00 or so to move up to a version of Quickbooks that Vista does not choke on.
As far as Linux or OS X. Well, I am used to being prompted only ONCE for each time I need admin privileges. In Vista it is not uncommon to be prompted several times. For instance, once to go to admin mode, and a second time for permission to copy a file into a system folder. Well damn! I thought when I dropped the file on the system folder and it asked for admin privileges. It new it was asking because I was moving a file. So why after switching to admin mode FOR THAT VERY REASON, does it have the genius idea of asking me again to confirm or deny copying that file?
The UI has changed" -> the changes are cosmetic. The fundamental UI features and concepts (widgets, task switching and windows management models, program launching, etc) remain the same as they were in *Windows 95*.
Configuration is a real PITA though. Almost everthing can be fond in 2 or 3 different places. You can get to the same component in several ways. However, so many things have moved to different places and changed names. It is difficult to administer the system. We are down to only two Vista systems. It is always fun to take a support call from a Vista userwith a networking issue who is 600 miles away.
Yes I know, more experience with Vista would help. Still Microsoft has broken so many of their interface guidelines. What would make them think it is a good idea to take a software interface like lets say, system configuration. Then change it so much that a system administrator with 12 years experience of dealing with 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP is back at square one. That is really leveraging a companies investment in Microsoft Windows software.
The sheer volume of FUD spewing out of the anti-Microsoft brigade about Vista is staggering
Microsoft is not having the extend the amount of time they are selling new copies of XP because of the vocal minority of Linux and OS X users who go "poo, poo" and don't like Vista. It is end user and business who are discovering and spreading the news that Vista is not getting the job done.
Even on day one, how much of a complaint was there that XP would not run the software people needed to run? Nothing at all like there is with Vista. I remember having to buy new hardware back then. Almost immediately all hardware was XP compatible. Within a year there was hardware that you could not get 98 drivers for. This is not true for Vista.
Believe me. I have NO love Microsoft. I thought with XP prodcut activation and the right of Microsoft to push updates AND deactivate or change functionality. That Microsoft was tightening the noose on folks. I wished for it to be seen as a dog and have slow adoption. With the Beta program for Vista being over 18 months old, Vista being available to businesses for 10 months, and retail for 8. With many PC makers going Vista only for 2 months and them having to backpeddle on that. Vista has both tightened the noose even more AND is a bigger dog that XP ever was. Also the non geeks hate it.
Almost all non-geeks that I know you have gotten Vista systems have hated them so much they have gone back to XP. The only one I know who is still running Vista, I think does not want to bug anyone to do a nuke a pave and reinstall all the software they would need to do their job.
vi +
So you're saying that a modern bloated OS is a better platform for running the new bloated application software, and that throwing a quad-core processor and several GB of RAM at the solution proves this?
No, I'm saying that a modern "bloated" OS takes better advantage of current hardware. Windows Vista will make _vastly_ better use of a quad-core, 4G RAM machine that NT4 ever could. As will Linux 2.6 (vs older versions).
Why so antagonistic? That's so out of place, and there's no need for that. I simply forgot about the Mac mini; we don't sell that many of them since we are mainly aimed at the pro market. No need to get rude and nasty, either. I don't wear a blue shirt with a yellow Best Buy logo. You really shouldn't readily categorize people or draw quick conclusions about them like that. I'm a professional and I do know what I am talking about, like most people on this forum. But you are right about the second bit: Apple loves to ditch old tech and introduce something new, and quite often ahead of the rest of the market, and so sometimes there are few peripherals available for that technology for some time.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
Sorry if I came across as being rude. Bad slashdot day I suppose. However, when appealing to slashdot users based on your authority, you should be careful not to make such simple mistakes in your logic, otherwise it kills your credibility. I'm sure you meant no ill-will by it, but there are more posers on slashdot than there are professionals like you and I.
Probably, since the internet is a big place. It's like this giant, crowded, noisy bar where people keep spilling each others' beer: "-Oh excuse me, mate!" "-You bastard, what did you do that for?" "-Sorry again." and so on. ;)
Maybe we should get back to the main topic: Vista, apparently a software release that MS really screwed up. I feel sorry for anybody that's forced to use it. Will post some new experiences from it today in another thread.
Beauty is in the beholder of the eye.
In my experience, most things will work even if there are some known compatibility issues. However, I have heard there are some older MS programs that simply don't work on Vista, for reasons I'm not quite sure about. In well over a year of use, I've never come across such a program first-hand however.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...