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Vista at Risk of Being Bypassed by Businesses
narramissic writes "With Windows 7 due in late 2009 or 2010, many businesses may choose to wait it out rather than make the switch to Vista. According to some analysts, Vista uptake at this point really depends on how good Vista SP1 (due in Q1, 2008) is. If it doesn't smooth over all the problems, companies are much more likely to stick with XP. And that holds especially true for those businesses that follow the every-other-release rule." Note for Microsoft: Allow us to natively disable trackpads.
they'll hold off on switching to Windows 7 until SP1 hits.
Maybe this whole "upgrade the OS" thing isn't such a good business plan after all?
As long as they stick with Windows, thats fine
Truth is, while holding off Vista might be an idea, what guarantee is there that Windows 7 will be any better. In many ways Vista seems to be a symptom of a failed development process, bad priorities and not understanding their users. When you have five years to developer a product and this is what you get, something is wrong.
Vista is not a total failure, but its not a success either.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
What's this about? Anyone want to clue me in?
I always mod up spelling trolls.
The thing that bugs me the most is the additional system resources it hogs - i buy a pc to run applications not run an OS. look at anything that runs both vista an xp and xp always has lower requirments. MS would win a lot of fans if they made OS releases they used the same or less resources instead of massive bloatware, or atleast show SOMETHING useful that's hogging the additional memory and CPU time.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
What is so bad about Vista when running on modern hardware?
It's not as if spectacularly better alternatives don't exist.
you had me at #!
Windows 7 VMing of all Unsigned code is bigger trun off and will likely brake alot more apps and drivers then what vista broke.
The VMing sound like a good idea but knowing MS they will just find a way to mess up or drive ram and cpu use for it to very high levels.
Also one VM per app will not work that well.
So, they already waited for Longhorn, which cratered. There's a very slow uptake of the 1 1/2 year rush-job that they called "vista", and now businesses are expected to wait for another MS development cycle of indeterminate duration?
I really don't know why MSFT's shareholders haven't lynched Ballmer by now.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
A company I was recently worked for was still using Windows95. As the workstations died they upgraded them to 2000.
/month on a 64k ISDN line used for a VPN (yes I know)
Novell 4 (check)
Windows 95 (check)
$2000.00
Glad I don't work there anymore
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Be on time? Of course not.
Will it be full of anti-user software and self-disabling drivers? Absolutely.
Im just about fed up with Microsoft.
Im used to the music and video companies treating customers like criminals, but MS with their remote computer deactivation garbage sets them far over the line. As far as I'm concerned, Im going Ubuntu and Debian.
BTW, Ubuntu likes my new T61 thinkpad. And IBM/Lenovo is Linux friendly.
Here is what the cybermen would say about windows Vista.
DEELEEEEEEEETE!
TSS
First Vista wasn't picked up because it was too late and then because business is waiting for SP1, and now because it's too early (business waiting for Windows 7 instead). Sometimes Slashdot seems like an message board for asshats.
At first glance this doesn't appear that bad for Microsoft -- so businesses wait, and then buy a different product from Microsoft; it delays income, but isn't that bad. The problem for Microsoft here is that it gives desktop linux an extra year or two to keep improving. The reality is that Linux on the desktop, whethr you consider it "ready" yet or not, has been improving at a far faster rate than Windows has. Just compare Windows98 and the contemporary releases of Linux (around Redhat 5.2 I think, back when they were still using Afterstep as the default environment) and then compare Vista to Ubuntu 7.10: any gaps have narrowed dramatically. Give linux another couple of years to make comparative gains and things may look inteesting when it comes time for businesses to look at OS upgrades -- do you move to Windows 7, or Linux? Both will probably represent almost equally large changes and require as much retraining as each other, and by that point Linux may well be a very good desktop option. Combine that with the fact that Linux (via wine) might actually be as good as Windows 7 at running your old win32 software (given Vistas difficulties with such things) and Microsoft may have a potential revolt on their hands.
The simple reality is tht, once you all out of step on the treadmill, then working to stay on it doesn't continue to look as attractive as it used to. Lock in is quite important to Microsoft's business model, and failing to keep businesses in step with current MS trends is actually quite a serious potential problem brewing.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
For example, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) is moving to Windows Vista on all their workstations in 2008, even though they don't NEED it. Part of this is due to a federal mandate, and part of it is because Microsoft has it as part of their service agreement. Service pack 1 for Windows Vista has nothing to do with the USCG's standard workstation operating system policy.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
M$ need to move corporate keys back to XP system.
Businesses do not like the idea that there vista system must call in to M$ to check there key from time to time or go in to limited functionality mode or use a key sever that calls in to M$ and systems can also go in to limited functionality mode if the sever / network goes down.
And if vista starts to gain more ground this may end become a big problem that limited testing be for a big roll is something that you may not run in to at that time and you may have to hope for a fast fix it your key gets blacklisted by mistake and most of your systems go in to limited functionality mode.
If Vista was 3 years late, why would anyone trust Microsoft's projections now? If "Windows 7" is going to hit in 2009, that's probably going to mean 2012 or 2011 at best.
... between the theorical release date of Vista and its real release date, I'm not that sure Windows 9 will be released in early 2010 actually.
What does Vista do that XP doesn't?
IIRC Windows ME was a bust right out of the gate. We have seen some grudging indications from MS that Vista (aka Windows ME II) isn;t meeting the expectations they had for it in terms of adoption and implementation. How long until people say, "Yep, Vista sure was a bust!"? Maybe MS will never say it, but what will it take to convince the popular press and cheerleader factions that Vista, in fact, was a horrible OS?
The cynic in me says it doesn't matter because the DRM core of the OS will never get the criticism it deserves and, thus, any follow-on OS will be just as bad. No OS that manages someone else's rights without giving a hoot for mine will ever run on my hardware.
I really like that function. Vista will reduce usefulness if it "THINKS" you're not quite legit on your licenses.
AT least in this arrangement, you know who pwns your machines.
Has Linux done this sort of anti-user garbage? Hmmm....
Though, I think I'd laugh if newer blackmailers threatened to reduce functionality on the targets computers... After all, the disable switch is built right on the side.
This is a grate time for apple make osX for all x86 systems and apple os is much better then windows as they have cut out all older api's and code from the old mac os 1-9 unlike M$ that still has code and API's from windows 3.X in vista.
Drivers for ATI / AMD / NVIDIA / Intel chipsets can easy be made from MacOSX like they are from windows and linux. ATI / AMD / INTEL / NVIDIA Video drivers are the same way as well.
There are real problems and it's a development model problem. Cooperation can't be counted on outside of free software, so everyone has to reinvent every wheel and applications bloat away. M$ has compounded this fundamental problem with digital restrictions and security theater instead of addressing real security and user needs. Vista is a disaster.
Everyone who reviews Vista comes away angry. Vistit the Vista Failure Log and see for yourself. Editors who hyped Vista have publically admitted their mistake. It's no better than XP and is in many ways worse.
Non free development does not work. The faster you move away, the more money, time and effort you save.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Yeah, right!
And unless Microsoft ditches all that internal DRM crap, who is to believe that the next Windows will be any better than Vista? Heck, based on MS's record, expect worse still all around, since I don't think they've learned anything from their failures with Vista yet!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Organizations don't want to install vista. Check. What makes us think the successor to Vista will be recieved any better?
Instead, the real danger to MS is a push to thin clients. I've heard rumblings lately, and if the next OS dissappoints like vista, you can expect huge deployments of thin clients coming. I know it would make more financial sense for my location when time comes to upgrade from XP to go with thin clients chatting with a windows terminal server. There is risk involved with this step, but if we see another crappy OS come out, it will be the justification I need to validate the switch over.
Just my thoughts on the matter.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
those businesses that follow the every-other-release rule.
This does not make sense. If there was such a rule, the business that are now on the de supported windows 2000 will go to vista in the near future. The business that are on XP (sp1 or SP2) will skip vista.
And the rule is more , one new major OS every 8 or 9 years (what i have seen)
I went to the store to buy a computer.
It was ALL Vista.
I had XP...it was OK.
I don't have time or inclination to play with Linux, being already employed elsewhere.
Apple solved that problem.
As the peecees, die, Apples will follow.
Vista lost me for good.
I'm getting used to not having to screw with the computer.
2012 == End of The World
At my company, we don't have a single Windows machine in sight. Do we miss it? Not at all. Our desktops are all macs, our workstations Linux, our servers are Linux and FreeBSD. After having worked at several companies that used Windows extensively, I can say I have no desire to ever go back to an environment like that. OS X and Linux are just so much more flexible, and have far less management overhead than any Windows environment.
As the Microsoft bloatware continues to sink into a morass of wasted processor cycles, the performance gap with Linux and Macintosh provides a great impetus to the adoption of Unix systems. The funny thing is that it used to be the other way around. Back in the 1980s, MS DOS and Win3.1 was touted as 'more efficient' than Unix systems.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
"THEIR"
"There" is a place. "Their" is a possessive.
Either get it write, or stop righting things online.
All our apps in house will soon be on Eclipse and by then we'll probably start skipping Windows altogether for Linux. We already have 20% Linux and that number is steadily climbing. There are a few key apps in the installed base which are not completely Java so we still have a requirement to run the base we have now (XP) but that's eventually going to change as well, or, they'll just get replaced.
If you are running Windows Vista Enterprise you can run your own license server. Sure, its another thing to deal with and keep running, but at least that option is there.
Let's see--
0. DRM throughout the system.
1. If a dialog box pops up, you can't move or resize the parent window. WHY ISN'T THIS FIXED YET?
2. It's slow and bloated, even on modern hardware.
3. Its user interface is inconsistent. (OK, KDE and Gnome are pretty bad this way, too, but OS-X isn't, for instance.)
4. DRM.
5. Intrusive security model.
6. Requires re-training of end-users, which is expensive. (Had to add this one, as it's always used as a "reason" to not move to Linux or OpenOffice.)
7. Invasive anti-piracy model.
8. DRM.
9. No compelling reason to upgrade from XP.
As you can see, there are lots of reasons MS-Windows Vista is not good, even on modern hardware. However, if it floats your boat, continue using it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The idea of skipping a release of an OS is pretty common-- at our office, we skipped Solaris 7 and 9, ferinstance. Many folks skip MacOS releases.
It seems like it would be a good idea for businesses to skip Vista-- take their site license and their Corporate Approved XP image and load it on all the new stuff that walks in the door, right? But what will keep businesses from skipping Vista is the hardware one buys a year from now likely won't have Windows XP drivers available for it. Other folks have control of the hardware-- Microsoft does not. And for once, this plays into their hands.
...all the hardware comes, OEM, with Vista. At my current business, we are constantly delayed by having to order the downgrade back to XP professional.
Until I have a reason to upgrade beyond Windows XP other than Microsoft telling me, or better yet, trying to force me, I'm sticking with Windows XP. I've yet to see one reason to upgrade Vista and no one I know personally has been happy they had upgraded.
Windows 7.
Indeed!
You haven't used Leopard then. Leopard = Vista. Both require at least 1.5GB of RAM to run with useful applications. Both require fairly fast hardware. Vista and Leopard don't run on 5 year old laptops at all. Apple's tradition of making it faster isn't true here. There are countless bugs in Leopard. The firewall is actually worse than Microsoft's now. Software applications were broken on both platforms. I actually prefer vista to leopard. I've used Leopard on a 3 month old iMac, a Mac Pro bought in February, and iBook and a PowerMac G4. It's slow on all of these. The Mac Pro shipped with 1GB of RAM which is the problem on that unit.
Apple and Microsoft think a lot alike these days. My pre-order Leopard disk was damaged and after an hour on the phone with Apple, I was sent to the nearest Apple store who bitched me out for not having a receipt. Now consider that they only give you a packing slip with the shipment and my Mac would not boot to print it! I didn't notice it right away and skipped the disc check the first time. I realize that part is my fault but I didn't appreciate the terrible customer service from the Briarwood Apple store (Ann Arbor, MI).
At work we've decided not to upgrade to Leopard until Parallels actually works with it and we can buy more RAM. We have labs full of iMacs bought over the summer!
Lastly, the advantage with OS X in the past was the control over hardware. Do you really think OS X would run well on a beater Dell? I don't.
The failure with vista was the marketing. Microsoft can't come up with one reason to get people to upgrade. Perhaps if they only shipped x64 vista it might have been an incentive for some. It worked with Windows 95. Most people are running 32bit vista. I've been using it since January and it's not too bad for a new Windows release. You must feed it RAM, but that's true of Macs or some of the bigger Linux distros too.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
apple os is much better then windows as they have cut out all older api's and code from the old mac os 1-9 unlike M$ that still has code and API's from windows 3.X in vista.
They didn't cut it out - it's a different OS. It makes about as much sense to say that Windows Vista is great, because they cut out all the "api's and code" from the old AmigaOS.
The question is, in what measurable ways is Windows's backwards compatibility causing problems for it?
Not to play Devil's Advocate here, but in all honesty, it's probably a good thing that these people didn't try out Linux sooner. Being introduced to something that's usable is one thing. Being introduced to something that's not, and then later asked to try it out again when it is usable is different. If the users don't have any prior experience with Linux, then they don't have any major predisposed bias. However, for those early adopters who tried using it, say, when WinXP was first released, most likely have bad memories of things like X11, Gnome, &al. In my opinion, it's best not to have many people use a product before it's good enough. Leave the beta-testing to people who enjoy that sort of stuff, but leave the risk-averse people out of it.
That's the longest articulation of "nothing" that I've seen in a long while.
The DRM and protected path nonsense is pretty radical, and of significant negative value to anyone who actually uses the platform.
Further, Microsoft is doing it's best to ensure people haven't the option not to upgrade.
As the IT Manager for a medium sized regional construction company, I've played with Vista for a year and frankly, I get frustrated with it - and if I do, I can't imagine how my userbase which has computer savy ranging from "I have servers at home too!" to "How do I turn this on again?" and there's no sense overburdening one's self with a massive amount of support calls with the lesser skilled people fighting with Vista's UI and all the other traps in the OS itself. (Hey, these people build buildings for a living, they shouldn't need to fight the OS on their laptops)
Vista might not be the utter stinking turd that ME was but it's a painful bowel movement nonetheless.
Here's to hoping Microsoft gets on the clue bus with Windows 7...
I have run leopard , on my powerbook for months in beta, and now the official, release, and it is /faster/ not slower. I am not sure what you are doing wrong.
Oh, I don't mean I actually want to *run* it, no sir! But a lot of machines being sold today have cheap prices on fairly hefty hardware. When I think of what Ubuntu will do with that hardware after I strip off that Microsoft crap, well...
And if I need to run Windows *software*, and Wine won't do the trick, I have old copies of both 2000 and XP that will work just fine on it.
Viva la Vista, baby!
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
A 1-gigahertz desktop running Windows XP with ECC memory meets the needs of most businesses. They had a genuine need to upgrade from the MS-DOS-based operating systems (OSes) like Windows 98 when Windows XP was launched. The former is just too unreliable, but the latter approached Linux-level reliability.
Going from Windows XP to Vista does not buy you a quantum leap in reliability. The latter has a nicer GUI than the former, but a nicer user interface is not enough to justify spending another $1000+ on a machine for your secretary.
During this obssessive drive to faster, bigger, and badder computers and OSes, eventually the technology reaches a point at which it exceeds the needs of the customers. We have reached that point -- that knee of the technology curve. Any further technical advancements beyond the knee does not bring new customers to computer company XYZ. The computer-systems market now resembles or will soon resemble the automotive market: a replacement market for broken devices.
I do not replace my Chevrolet Camaro when a new sports car enters the automotive market. I replace my Camaro when it becomes too expensive to repair.
No spokesperson for a computer company ever talks about the arrival of the "knee". It means flat sales and thin margins for the company.
Well, the knee has arrived. The personal-computer industry is now a mature industry like the automotive industry. Welcome to flat sales and used-computer salescritters.
sell microsoft or buy microsoft?
apple own hardware choice is not that good as well the mac pro is still at the same and hardware as it was back in August 2006 come up apple should at least bump it to 2gb of ram and $150 for a 7300gt????
also the mini is underpowered for it's price 2.5 80GB laptop hdd , 1.83GHz laptop cpu , 1GB memory, CDWR / DVD / intel gma 950 for $599.00 add $200 to get a 120GB hard drive, 2.0GHz laptop cpu and DVDRW.
The imacs have weak video and laptop parts for a desktop system and the $1,199.00 - $1,799.00 imacs only come with 1gb of ram?
The macbook black should have 2gb of ram and real video for $1,499.00.
Where is the desktop mac with desktop not high end workstation / sever parts?? for $600 - $1500 +
To each their own I say, for me....
I've just purchased a new notebook (from an auction, 2 by mistake but, that's life - it sucks sometimes, the silver lining is the other notebook can be a dedicated Debian setup - unstable and yes "Bleeding Edge" is mentioned below) it has Vista Business installed. The first thing I will do is get rid of Vista and put XP on it, not because Vista is crappy, it has some nice features, but because XP would work better on the hardware, (AMD TURION 64 1.6 GHz 1 gig RAM) take up less space on the hard drive and also save me from working out how to disable a lot of the new "features" - no I do not think warning me I'm about to install something every time I am about to install something was well thought out.
When I go through the issues I have with Vista, it boils down to things that do not have to be there at all, some of them are:
DRM - a setup that seems to use a lot of resources, if a company wants to go down that path at least make it inobtrusive and not crippling.
Licensing (I am utterly bewildered by how Microsoft licensing works).
Enhanced Security. They have put in some good work in this area and then put things in that... well they are very frustrating it is a real pain installing anything - windows signed, user permissions - yes it is a good idea to limit an ordinary user (which can be done with XP) but compared to the OS X and Linux/Unix way, it is frustrating.
Drivers, yes I know that the driver situation is improving but this makes the whole thing feel like Bleeding Edge software rather than Leading Edge (note: with Deb Unstable I get a lot of benefit productivity wise with using unstable i.e. I'm not running it for Compiz/Beryl type features, not so with Vista)
What am I getting that improves my "productivity"? The features that work well would mainly be aimed at home users that would not know how to configure XP to do similar things and to protect them from themselves (this is a big plus for the joe-prons) I do not think business is interested in Aero, neither am I, nice to have if it doesn't get in the way but unfortunately at the moment it does.
This is what Microsoft believes will help my productivity the network backup could have been handy (why can't I pick what I want backed up?) bummer.....
BM3
let the Microsoft burn.
Seriously, we'd be better off without them.
How did they break multi-monitor support?
.
But the notion that it will actually be ready by 2009 or 20010 seems unlikely, based on recent history..
.
Yes, I made a typo in the second year. I noticed it in the preview, but left it in out of cuteness. Think of it as my version of typing M$.
Steve Jobs is a visionary.. He has the balls..
The problem is his balls are terribly small. Steve is too scared of Microsoft and his own user base to release OSX for all computers. However, most Mac addicts would probby feel great about being ahead of the game if their precious OSX was released to everyone.
That's right.. I said Steve Jobs has small balls. Grow bigger balls, please.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Who do you think the path is protected *from*?
I agree; the new volume activation scheme is a total pile of rubbish. Once again, it's easier to pirate than maintain an activation server (You know it'll break sometime. Not the hardware; the software will just spontaneously blow up, and probably take your licenses with it), or keep meticulous records of MAK usage.
Pretty well any PC made by the major OEMs within the last two years can have any edition of Vista OEM activated (permanently, XP style) with two lines in the command prompt, a certificate specific to the system manufacturer, and one of the keys that are common to all OEMs.
Oh, how I miss the days of Windows 2000, when Microsoft showed a little trust with their clientele.
Thats the biggest problem with MS, too many dead end APIs or libraries or even whole components.
So instead of fixing said component and making it better, they just give up and start from scratch (usually with different people) call it a different name, make it work differently and sometimes
worse, and also add a requirement that its only to work with NEW OS onwards. End result is with each new OS, theres more new libraries, and it has to keep the old ones to be compatible sometimes
translating to new system apis, and perhaps breaking working apps. And, yes, their docs sometimes are poorly written.
All this makes learning stuff ongoing and short lived. There are probably more dead end end of cycle apis than new ones. The old ones often arent that bad, its just that because they are old
they are not maintained or updated to link in with new components. Its a hodgepodge of mixed libs/apis.
The question long term is do you grow the system APIs or the 'application linked' apis. Some parts of windows which really are just like an application are wrong to be part of windows.
And if MS makes some wrong GUI designs or incomplete looking apps, they never get updated, just left to be crap, because if they did updated it, it would make countless manuals training books obselete. And
then it goes back in a circle to the first problem, they wont fix it in the current OS so they pass it off to the next OS group.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
And this quote from the article proves it:
"They wouldn't be licensing Windows desktop if they didn't have the intent to deploy Vista"
Actually, yes "they" would.
If you are buying machines for any reason, why wouldn't you buy the Vista licensing and use your downgrade rights to run XP? The volume licenses cost the same - why limit your choices?
Microsoft really needs to start listening to their customers.
-ted
We had the same problem and have been moving people to OSX w/ parallels. It's a really great combination and really gets rid of most reasons to own a windows box.
More and more of those proprietary applications are become Browser based, because it's less of an IT hassle. The VBA-heavy Excel spreadsheets that people use are real (and Open Office is NOT a substitute, Mac Office rarely is a substitute, Windows Excel just kicks ass), but are normally only a small portion of the office.
New companies will roll out web apps, but companies with legacy won't. In addition, you have proprietary licensed apps that aren't easy to change and are industry specific. Many of them are probably Win16 apps, because they run on Windows-32, there was no need to upgrade them and lose the Windows 3.1 users. When that stopped being an issue 10 years ago, the programmers had moved on and there wasn't necessarily a clean way to upgrade your VB2/3 applications.
Each year, the issue becomes less significant. Netscape thought that they had a solution 13 years ago, but didn't understand just HOW SLOW the business world moves. The fact is, if I have a single Windows only application to run, it makes it worthwhile to keep Windows around instead of moving to Linux.
My Windows -> Mac Migration was years ago, and I still have a Windows machine (and Parallels on some Macs) for running applications that we are stuck with. With the current gig I have, I need to RDC into my work computer to see all the file shares and run whatever I need to run there, and that is at an Internet company.
The local license server fucking sucks. We use that. We only use Vista on a small number of machines, for testing purposes. The license server won't activate any computers until it sees at least 25 different Vista installations.
There's a way around that, but damn that's irritating, and one of many reasons why Vista is "over my dead body" for the moment.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It may not seem it to Linux users, but the eye candy that Apple added generally gives you visual clues to what is going on. When I minimize a window it graphically collapses to the Dock, that's useful, because without thinking about it, I watched it drop down and keep track of it. When I switch between users, the graphical rotation visually lets me know that I've done something substantial. It breaks the visual space the way I've visually broken up the process.
It subconsciously gives me information and it useful.
The eye candy on my XP desktop at work is not useful, is mostly annoying, and doesn't help me understand my environment. That's a HUGE difference.
I think that their most important failure is their development process.
For years, Microsoft's books about software management were the best, because it included human management (by suggesting using geniuses for the coding) along with software planning.
But these last years, the agile methodologies (TDD, extreme programming, etc...) appeared and Microsoft has not been able to use them.
First, their main problem is that they have a lot of legacy code (millions of lines of code !) with ZERO automated test (we don't count code analysis as a test). Adding tests and refactoring the code will take several YEARS, since the code is not designed to be automatically tested.
Secondly, their tool (Visual Studio) is still unable to generate proper testing skeletons and sucks at refactoring (even though it's promised since several years).
Meanwhile, we see Apple, Google and Mozilla successfully use agile technologies, and tools like Eclipse ease agile development.
Apple releases one upgrade every SIX months, and Firefox releases one new version every year. Why cannot Microsoft do the same ?
A generation of cell phones takes less than one year !
Console generations last 2 or 3 years.
Even Ubuntu has a release cycle of one year.
Do Microsoft think everybody will wait 3 YEARS to get their new expensive OS ?
Technology changes every year, and gets cheaper, while Windows is still using old development procedures, and their OS are more and more expensive.
Microsoft has to quickly drop its one year beta phase, and implement automated tests, or Vista will die within the two next years.
... oh happy day!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Why do you assume I'm doing something wrong? How much RAM do you have? The only person who has told me that has a new Mac Pro with 3 GB of RAM. Even he tells me that he needs more for parallels.
As for speed, my wife uses a Mac Pro to play WoW. She got 60FPS with 10.4.9. She gets 20-30fps with Leopard 10.5.1. That is one application and is caused mostly by all the swapping it has to do now. I can't generalize, but it is the same hardware and your claim was that it's faster which it's clearly not in this instance.
As for the betas, I was testing Leopard server on a PowerMac G5 at work since August. Big deal. I administer labs full of Macs, 2 xserves and an xserve raid at work. 10.2 -> 10.4 shows a speed increase with each release. It's very obvious outside of slightly higher RAM requirements. This time you had a huge decrease in the number of Macs that can run it and it requires a lot of RAM. The minimum RAM doubled between 10.4 and 10.5. I sold my iBook on ebay because i had an 800mhz G4 which is too slow. If Leopard is so much faster, why can't all those G4 Macs run it? Next you'll tell me Vista is faster than XP.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Where I work, it is not a risk. It has been confirmed that our IT team will skip Vista completely, as it does not meet our needs as well as Windows XP does.
Here is what Strongbad would say about windows Vista.
BALEETED!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
It would cost the business more in TIME to open a user's workstation and put those components in than the components themselves cost.
Businesses tend to buy/lease the entire workstation.
That is why they will run what was "new" from 4 years ago. The machine was NOT the latest/greatest when they bought/leased it. That is because they know that the machine will be far less expensive 1 year AFTER those components are released.
Just configuring a basic Dell box with specs close to your's would be over $800. Not counting the Vista license.
Technically, Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista is a different OS than Windows 3.1/95/98/ME. It uses a different kernel architecture, different memory management, a different file system, etc...
The APIs have changed as well. There are quite a few API functions that have Extended versions, such as CreateWindowEx(), SetWindowsHookEx(), etc...
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
grate (noun): iron grill no, that's not it.
grate (verb): scrape/rub not that either
grate (verb): get on my nerves well, egregious spelling mistakes do that...
I think the word you are looking for is great.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
If it makes you feel better, you can pretend Microsoft pays me $4.50 a day to argue with morons on teh internets.
They pay you too much. Only a dedicated attack troll like you would wander this far into AC hell and display your sock puppets when called a Microserf. Idiots. M$ pays Idiots to do their work and only idiots would want to.
I'm astonished that I have yet to see the best reason not to roll out Vista in a business environment mentioned. The answer is quite simple.
Vista kills productivity, yet offers no real value in return.
In order to run Vista where I work, we would have to replace every single machine we have. That's over 100 desktops and laptops--not cheap. Granted, some of those computers need to be replaced, but that's beside the point. Even crappy P4, 1GHZ, 256MB RAM, on-board video computers run XP better than a brand new Dell laptop with 2GB RAM and a 256MB video card runs Vista (it was running Vista Business Premium). Why in the @#$%! should we pay a boatload of money to slash our workers' productivity? As far as I can see, there is absolutely no business case for Vista whatsoever. Until such a day as there is, then you can bet your bottom dollar I won't allow a move to Vista to kill ours.
Granted, from a technological standpoint, Vista is crap. But that's not the argument to make to your superiors when opposing it. Show them how it will hurt your bottom line. That'll get their attention.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
If Vista was working out then they'd announce Windows 7 for 2010 or something. Advertising it for next year seems to indicate that businesses have already decided not to upgrade to Vista, SP1 or no SP1.
No sig today...
That's one possible outcome. Another is that it will lead to virtualisation technology becoming mainstream rather than the plaything of technical folks, and better implementation techniques with much more acceptable overheads will be developed along the way. I'm not saying this has to happen, but hey, a lot of programmers still think co-ordinating multiple threads has to be slow, while the Erlang folks try to politely hide their laughter. They get the equivalent effects in a different way, and sidestep the problems by being smart about how they implement things.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Seriously - in what fashion is XP obsolete? Or Windows 2000, even?
I hear people mention DirectX 10 and various esoteric tools that are only of interest to sysadmins. Perhaps someone would mention media capabilities.
If you aren't interested in any of those because you mainly need OpenOffice and perhaps FireFox, what the crap has Vista to offer over XP? Or XP over 2000? Or 2000 over NT4? I draw the line at NT4, because 3.51 had a horrible GUI and the DOS-based Windows lack all multi-user and safety features.
The problem with Vista is that it has no practical benefits to offer.
I work for one of the big 5 banks up here in Canada and all the branches still use pentium pro's and 2's running windows 95. We have to use an emulator of sorts to get our java/html based software running.
They say that in a year or so we'll be getting "upgrades" to windows 2000, but they've been saying that for years apparently. Needless to say, things are very buggy and stuff crashes all the time. Progress is wonderful...
Well, I know it does somewhat diminish the "strong security" built into Windows Vista, turning UAC (User Account Control) off would have prevented this issue.
And if you are actually interested in protecting your computer [unlikely, or you would be running *nix], you would probably know to not make your default account have Admin rights, [which would make UAC all-but-pointless anyway, but most Windows users don't know WTF an Admin account is, so here we are..]
I turned that crap off on my Vista box immediately, even when I was playing with RC2. (I work in desktop support and needed to be proficient with Vista as it's a bitch for your average Joe Consumer to get a new computer with any other version of Windows on it.. that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)
Maybe I'm missing something here?
E = m * c^(Hammer)
Progess I suppose, it wasn't long ago that Royal Bank finally gave up on OS/2 Warp.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Businesses can continue to run XP and run all their legacy software, if they just virtualize it. Run it in a VM on whatever super-new boxes they are getting then (that are running Linux or whatever as the real OS). Run their legacy stuff in a VM which has a "fixed" hardware profile, and will never need to be "supported" in an ongoing basis even if Microsoft abandons it.
Microsoft did exert pressure on PC makers to improve the price/performance so that Vista would run well. How much that pressure was effective I'm not sure, but I am aware of at least 1 program they had surrounding this issue.
I don't think that Linux and Mac OS X are in direct concurrence. Simply because Mac owners will most of the time prefer Mac OS X, and that PC owners will rather move to Linux.
When I switched from Windows I got a PC with Linux preinstalled I'll set up as a server and for a laptop I got the Macbook Pro I'm typing this on.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ubuntu is a good desktop OS. Linux is the name of the kernel.
Just like Red Hat produce a great enterprise product. The user experience is still defined by the quality of the product provided by Red Hat. Linux based distributions usually share from the wealth of quality software produced and provided by the community, but that doesn't mean that the responsibility (or blame) for the quality of the distribution falls on the KDE or Gnome project manager. That's backwards. These projects do great work and then give you (or in the two examples the companies) the source. To presume that this is the final product would show an amazing lack of imagination.
An individual distribution can do as much to improve or customize the operating environment as they want. Including developing standards and improvements based on their target market. When people expect "Linux" or the community at large to do this I find it kind of alarming. Linux and the open source projects surrounding it are far too diverse in scope and purpose to create the kind of one-size-fits-all user utopia you seem to be suggesting. But if you're interested in seeing it succeed in a particular segment (desktop in this case) then focusing your comments or energy on a single distribution would probably be the right way to address your concerns (and maybe even help or make a difference).
Finally (sorry, this is long) a Windows compatibility layer does not mean Windows clone. If that's something you're actually looking for I think you'll always be disappointed. At best Wine is a crutch to possibly ease the transition.
Quack, quack.
I consult with various big insurance companies and from call centers to data centers, Windows 2000 is everywhere today. A major new medical center opened up near my home and I had injured my shoulder trying to stay healthy ;) and the X-ray room, doctors office and reception were all running Windows 2000 Pro. I went downtown to a government office last month and saw Windows 2000 running there. Some of the military installations also run Win2K. Most IT departments and IT/Telecom/Computing businesses run XP but outside of that, I still see tons of Win2K boxes happily chugging along.
Win2K is everywhere even though Microsoft claims its end-of-life. Obviously, there are a lot of businesses that don't see it as DOA yet and they never made the switch to XP. If after XP has been out this long and these companies and corporations didn't have a need to upgrade, what makes Microsoft think they would upgrade to Vista or Windows 7?
I think about the only way some of these institutions would upgrade would be if Microsoft remotely disabled their products. The old product still works and the old applications are running fine so many of my clients don't want the risk of changing anything. While some run every other OS release, many don't change until forced to. That means their IT staff need to support multiple versions of the OS.
One company runs hundreds of X-Terms to three Sun 6500s on large RAID systems and a small group of Citrix Windows servers (Suns are the drives and Citrix is the OS and applications) There isn't a real PC anywhers! Everything is X-Terms and thin clients.
By the time Windows 7 comes out, it is possible that computers on every desk will be obsolete. Look at where Google is headed.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Need I say more?
Where is the data showing that big business is using XP now? The migration to XP might be finished by the time 7 is trusted, but Vista will never bridge the gap...
It's simple: He's assuming none of us out here know anything about OS/hardware performance gains in Linux and OS X. He's an idiot, in other words, in public, instead of private.
Today I installed a CD of Windows Unattended Edition, a CD that some friend gave me some time ago and never needed so I never knew how good it was.
In one CD I have a fast streamlined Windows XP with Office 2003, Firefox, an antivirus and shitloads of useful stuff.
It's being used in my parents' computer, and that machine now boots faster than my own, which has a much faster processor and more than double the RAM than the older one. The old is a slow Duron and now it can boot in about 15 seconds top!
It's of course unlicensed software so that's why I'm being an AC.
However, there are tools to make streamlined WindowsXP install CDs that business can use legally and it can surely beat Windows Vista in speed, easy of use and easy of installing and by far, very far.
NT4: Sucks
NT4 is the only MS Windows OS I used that I did not have trouble with.
XP: OK.
The first tyme I used XP I had to hold in the power button until it shutdown then reboot because it froze while booting up the first tyme.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The problem is his balls are terribly small. Steve is too scared of Microsoft and his own user base to release OSX for all computers. However, most Mac addicts would probby feel great about being ahead of the game if their precious OSX was released to everyone.
While Steve Jobs was gone from Apple Apple did license the Mac OS to clone makers but when Apple brought Jobs back he saw that the company was loosing more from lost hardware sales than Apple made from licenses. So he ended licensing the Mac OS. There's no way he wants to see that again. And yes, compeating directly against MS is a bad idea, MS has already show what it will do to competitors, put them out of business by whatever means necessary.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Who cares about some abstract 'direction'.
I want a single stable Desktop applications API.
No Gnome/KDE/Java constantly evolving competing APIs.
There can be thousands of distributions. They can choose any software they want and none of it could be considered standard. Just give me a common Desktop API.
Give me an API that doesn't break after updates. Let me write installers or a hook to use the repository of software for the distro, whatever.
(Posted as an AC because Linux fanboys will flame me and downmod me for trying to develop commercial closed source software for Linux.)
all the shiny little multi-media features.
:-)
They're running businesses, not gaming rooms or living rooms.
They don't even want flash in their Internet Exploder.
Microsoft is trying to push but their market is not interested.
Linux on the desktop is looking better and better to the average bank. (They only own tens of thousands of machines each.)
And the Mac is a stabler platform for the home.
So where does that leave "Monkey Boy?"
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
As one of the suckers who purchased and installed Vista (Ultimate) I have found Vista to run slower and be most annoying.
About 6 months ago I finally purchased a Mac, the difference is amazing. Macs work and Vista pops up windows asking if you really want to do what you. I've been computing & have been online since I purchased a 300Baud modem in the early eighties. I'm kicking myself for shunning Macs for so long.
I'd recommend everyone, not only business bypass Vista, get a Mac if windows is still needed for you load bootcamp and run XP just fine, wait and see if MS tanks under its own weight or wakes up and makes something worth using.
At work we've decided not to upgrade to Leopard until Parallels actually works with it and we can buy more RAM. We have labs full of iMacs bought over the summer!
I'm typing this on a MBP that's about 3 months old and I have no plans on installing Leopard even though I have a disk with it Apple sent me. I don't see any compelling reason to right now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Anyone who wants a thin client can keep it but I want something that can stand alone and be used. Reminds me how people used to say there's no need for a computer on the desk, now we're heading that way again.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Edsel at Risk of Being Bypassed by Customers.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
i have vista although I'm not using it.. (it is on a dual boot) and it hasn't been booted in months
... 2nd page into the install dialog installer crashes...
.nix Antichrist?? cause every time i get near anything .nix~ish it fucks up in someway.
..exchange server... WSUS ..etc windows software with great success... but every time i touch something like linux it blows up in my face..
i don't like vista
I made a (not 100% arguably) but a effort to try out various linux distro
1st distro.. looks ok.. for the most part usable.. except my god damned wireless adapter will not work with and WPA or WEP security turned on.
I spend a hr and a half trying to find the solution..then i got pissed off
2nd distro... can't install it downloaded it twice burned it to multiple discs kernel panic every time i try to install it... lost interest in trying to figure it out.
3rd distro... booted of liveCD wireless works.. great.. tried to install it to the hard drive
I for one am praying for a AWESOME Vista SP1 or for Windows 7 to kick some ass. for the moment i'm parting like it is 2001 Windows XP style.
well...... great...
apple is completely unacceptable... as you are restricted to apple hardware and apple's hardware doesn't meet my needs at a acceptable price point...nor am i impressed with OS X in general.
that and for some reason i can't get near a mac without it crashing
it is possible i am the
I can't understand it... I have setup windows domains
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
I've installed ubuntu, and even as very technical user, I had problems when trying to customize my installation to my needs. You basic email, web, IM works out-of-the-box with no problems. However I need to: - connect my windows mobile device. (no i'm not going to reflash it with something else) - had problems with ATI driver - have to compile drivers for any obscure devices i might try to connect - safe mode is not graphical - windows was snappier on my 6 year old laptop (probably due to generic drivers being used by ubuntu) I'm afraid we're living in a MS ecosystem. In the business world it's Windows-Exchange-MS office + windows mobile. At home it's windows, windows games, windows media center, and xbox. Ubuntu has given Linux some sort of standardization but still I think they need alot of money to even approach the dominance of MS. Even Ubuntu feels like many separate projects held together by string. Of course Apple has their own eco-system too. Conclusion: governments should do more to support open source for the benefit of all.
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
You'll have a dancing monkey throw a chair at me to buy Vista, otherwise i'm not budging.
Leopard took 2.5 years after Tiger's release and was supposedly delayed because of problems with the iPhone.
I have a brand new quad core intel box, 2gb ram, etc. I have XP as the main OS (I've work to do, vs.net doesn't run on linux ;)) and Ubuntu 7.10 on a smaller partition, just for fun. When I compare the resources XP uses vs. what Ubuntu uses (with 3D desktop stuff), then Ubuntu clearly uses much less resources than XP does. What's more: running threaded software on both shows that XP has less capabilities of maximizing the CPUs.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
You know, in reading this article, I have just been enlightened. I realize that all this time, I was confused because I didn't understand the purpose of Windows Vista. You see, I thought it was Microsoft's way of making a really, really funny joke. I mean, what else could Vista possibly be? Let's examine Vista and see why this is so:
- Every other button you push, the entire screen goes black and it asks you, "Did you really push that button?"
- The system is so excruciatingly slow that even on the newest hardware, it is much, much slower than XP on much older hardware.
- Boatloads of drivers and applications that worked fine under XP do not function under Vista. The result is that things like printers that were supported just fine under XP do not work under Vista. The result is that you have to throw away your perfectly good printer or whatever, and get a new one, as if having just bought a brand new computer and dropping a ton of money on Vista Ultimate isn't enough of an expense.
- The Vista installer takes F*O*R*E*V*E*R to load, and then gleefully tells you that Windows Vista "saves you time," as if to demonstrate that if the installer is this slow, wait 'till you experience the operating system!
- The colors chosen for the Vista desktop and windows are such an eyesore that even their own mother couldn't possibly like them. I'd like to know what the graphic designers were smoking, because I want some.
- There are not one or two but six different versions of Vista. Do they suddenly think they're in the Linux business because it seems they want to scream out, "We're just like Linux; we have too many distros to choose from too!" (Well, I think someone mentioned that RMS wanted Vista to be called GNU/Vista or something like that.)
- Even if you're an expert XP user, you have to completely relearn how to use a computer when you downgrade to Vista, because everything is so significantly different that you'll have a field day just figuring out how to move a file from one place to another.
So, I mean, what else but a really funny joke could this be? A product?But having read this story, I now understand that there are actually people who worked on this Vista thing who believed that they were making a serious software product. The only thing I can think to say is that this is a tremendous shame. I mean, Windows XP can do pretty much anything that a business might need. All they had to do was spend the last five years or so perfecting XP, ironing out all the bugs, cleaning it up as much as they could, optimizing it for better performance, tightening up security, etc. That would have given them a very solid product with which to compete. Instead, they wasted all this effort, time, and money making a product so embarrassingly slow and bloated, even on the newest hardware, that many businesses are avoiding it like the plague. I'm sorry but I really think that Vista is an enormous flop, even if Microsoft is successful in selling millions of copies. The point is that Vista is actually a very good advertisement for Apple Macs with Mac OS X, and for Linux and the *BSDs.
Their motto used to be "Where do you want to go today?" I don't know about you, but as my sig and journal both say, Microsoft released Vista, so I went to an Apple retail store and bought a Mac.
Ok. No email about the world's finest software company is complete without a remark that calls for chairs to be thrown... but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
Installed Leopard on a 1.25GB (G4)PowerBook with 1GB of RAM. The PowerBook is noticeably faster to the point that I can no longer justify replacing it as I was about to. Also installed Leopard on a dual 2.3 GB (G5) PowerMac with 4GB of RAM. The PowerMac also very much faster under Leopard. Perhaps you have some incompatible software installed on your intel Macs (APE in my case slowed things down until I uninstalled it) or you have not let SpotLight re-indexing of the attached volumes complete or you have other add-ons that need updating (my case SnapZpro and Soho Notes).
Half Word - Will Double, Wire Palindrome, San Francisco
> With Windows 7 due in late 2009 or 2010,
With Windows 7 RTM _theoretically_ due in late 2009 or 2010 (in the same sense that Longhorn was due out in 2003, or maybe it was 2002, I don't remember precisely), and no sane sysadmin approving an upgrade to a new Microsoft OS until at least the first service pack, the question is, will Windowx XP SP2 still have extended support by the time Windows 7 SP1 comes out?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The problem is his balls are terribly small. Steve is too scared of Microsoft and his own user base to release OSX for all computers.
Steve has no fear with regards to Microsoft when it comes to releasing OS X for regular PCs - why would he ?
Steve's fear is of companies like Dell and HP, because they'll sell cheaper (and more configurable) Macs than he does.
I'm running WoW on my 1GB RAM MBP. I got 20fps with Tiger and I get 20fps with Leopard. Take note that the recent 2.3 patch reset the WoW video settings - perhaps she is running with other video settings?
At present, "top" reports 251MB phys memory active of which firefox consumes 84MB (resident). Leopard probably consumes somewhat more memory than its predecessor, but your 1.5GB claim is over the top.
Leopard in itself feels snappier - especially spotlight which I've now actually started to use on a daily basis. 10.5.1 apparantly fixed a lot of issues - also firewall related. Perhaps you should try it again?
Actually Steve isn't afraid of HP and Dell for their cheaper Macs either because Steve just wants GOOD Macs, regardless of price point.
>>The biggest problem Linux has is its lack of a central authority
That is a minor problem, if a problem at all. The real problem with desktop linux adoption is apps and drivers - especially apps. I hear this from people all the time: "I would love to try linux, but won't run quickbooks, or autodesk, or whatever; and it won't work with my combination printer/fax/scanner."
W2k runs all my apps and hw, runs fast on low-end hardware, doesn't have a fisher-price interface, and doesn't require any online registration.
I dual-boot debian and w2k, I'm hoping that I can go debian only by the w2k is finally killed off.
It's good to see slashdot and some of its followers still haven't weaned themselves off Microsoft propaganda yet. I'd feel annoyed if some people in Microsoft weren't doing similar.
For the record, how many companies do you actually think are going to upgrade every release cycle?
Errr, not all of them that's for sure. Does that mean Vista is a failure? On this website it apparently does.
When you see this line take a nose-dive (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=MSFT&t=2y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=) after a Windows release, or indeed when it becomes difficult to buy a new PC with Windows on, then you can claim its a failure.
For now, Vista runs perfectly fine on million and millions of PCs all around the world and is selling faster that XP did(http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/03/27/vista-selling-faster-than-xp-did), which only achieved 98% market share.
Now can we have enough of the MS propaganda please? You're looking as bad as they are.
throw new NoSignatureException();
Why in hell is this going to be Windows SEVEN?? I can remember Windows 3 (well, 3.1 anyway) and there have been a LOT more than three versions (4, 5, and 6) since then ... 95, 98, 98SE, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Vista ... seems like this next one should be Windows TWELVE, shouldn't it?
Oh, well, we know M$ can't write software, I guess they can't count either.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
...when Microsoft upgrades AD so it can compete with LDAP...
Let me ask you something seriously... what advantage is there for an end user or company to have Active Directory so tightly bound to the OS. Doesn't it make upgrading the server OS to a new version problematic? I mean, it's not bad enough you're changing the underlying OS and introducing some potential glitches to production apps, but then, you're also changing the security portion of the entire enterprise.
So unless you're in one of those tiny 5 servers and 100 user shops, the tight linkage is absolute *madness*.
AD should be a product that you add to the OS; the only reason it's not is because it forces you to run a homogeneous MS environment if you want to use AD. And if you use any MS products, you have to use AD. The circle or lock-in is complete. Except for large enterprises who cannot use AD, as non-Microsoft stuff doesn't support AD, including mainframes, non-MS App servers, physical security systems, etc etc etc.
AD is just crazy, and a poor choice unless you're a small shop.
SysAdmin for 300 node network. We'll be sticking with XP for the foreseeable future (i.e. Windows 7).
I'll be surprised if the larger companies switch to Vista. A general rule of thumb is that the larger the company, the slower any software transition. Many reasons for this, from testing compatibility of your apps with the new software, to layers of bureaucracy to go through. As an example, General Electric is roughly 60% WinXP and 40% Win2K, at least in Europe -- I can't speak for other territories. Office 2000 is deployed on appoximately 80% of systems, Office XP on another 15%, and only 5% or so having moved to the 'modern' Office 2003 -- this despite known errors in Excel 2000 with workbooks containing lots of pivot tables and formulae running into the 'out of memory' issue. Given that they are the world's second largest company, and that there's no way they will be upgrading to any new OS without having, say, 3-4 years to test it and get it approved by the powers that be, that's a huge number of sales Microsoft will miss out on. I can only assume that other comperably large companies have similar behavior.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Say what? Will someone please explain to me in detail how this is modded as troll? I explained in great detail with facts to back up my response? This is not a personal attack lol, people need to grow up and get a thicker skin.
Your troll-fu is weak.
Leopard is nowhere CLOSE to Vista. Vista has been out OVER A YEAR while Leopard was released only a few weeks ago. Most of Leopard's bugs were fixed with the recent release of 10.5.1... and when is Vista's first SP due...?
Seriously, how the hell were you modded informative and how the hell is that even a comparison?
Thanks, and enjoy every sandwich!
However, if it floats your bloat, continue using it. --there, fixed it for you! ;^)
Sounds like one more reason to migrate business apps to a web platform.
It wasn't long ago that setting up a new workstation was a tedious process for me, having to install and configure all manner of office apps and mail clients and whatnot. Now though, with platforms like OWA and Google's hosted office & collaboration tools, this is as close to a non-issue as it's ever been.
I'm a Windows developer, and about half of what I do at work I can do just as easily from a Windows or Linux workstation these days. Give me a Visio-compatible diagramming tool and a little closer of a drop-in replacement for Visual Studio than Mono Develop and I'm set. Unless current trends completely reverse themselves in the coming years, Microsoft lock-in is going to weaken inexorably.
Pi Ran Out
I see you don't work in "IT Support". If you did you would know how stupid that is. Large and even small companies either hire individuals or hire outsource IT companies for "Support" These individuals that "do" the actual support work are trained Techs or Engineers. They don't need to call MS and never do. When they do get stumped with a problem they either call a cohort in the business and ask them if they know of a fix or go online and in the case of Windoze go to the TechNet site or check the forums of answers. I know this for a fact I work for a company that does Outsourced IT for small to medium sized businesses. We NEVER! call Microsoft! We are engineers and most likely know their OS better than they do so why call and waste time?
Now for Joe and Jane user that works for a company that we support who are they going to call? They call us. That is what we get paid for. We are "Support" not Microsoft. We still support Win95 if needed. MS doesn't. Hell we will even support DOS if needed. We are Systems Engineers where I work. We work on systems. We don't care what it runs on. We will work on it. A MCSE is NOT a System Engineer. A real Systems Engineer maybe better at one system OS than the other but he can work on any of them. All systems are not Microsoft.
So what if Joe and Jane user decide to run Linux or a Sun desktop? Who are they going to call for support? They are going to call us that is what we get paid for and yes they will get support! You might get transfered to a different person but you will gladly get support. We support most flavors of Linux and Solaris. Most of our customers don't realize it but they may have an XP desktop but most of the backend servers that are serving them are running Solaris or Linux.
Actually we discourage the use of Vista and say that we don't really support it. Any Windoze boxes we put online are XP. We beg our customer NOT to get Vista. These days we are encouraging our clients to really look at Sun and Linux. One of our big points is if your going to have to learn a new desktop and a new office suite. Why not make the change to Linux or Solaris and be done with client licenses, malware, spyware, viruses, blue screens O' death, changing desktops, and on and on...
Personally I haven't even looked at Vista. I did watch my boss play with it for a week and then reload XP. (yes he's a Windows engineer) His evaluation? "What a piece of shit." I must admit I have turned Vista off a couple of times to load FC7 or Solaris10 on the machine infected by Vista. Vista is not an OS. It is an infection in itself.
Why will I not learn it or touch Vista? Anyone that has worked Windows support knows the scenario. You work on a system and it fails again it is now YOUR FAULT its broke. If I never touch it, then it is never my fault. What do I tell people when they cry to me about their Vista machine? "I told you not to buy that crap. Sorry I don't work on Vista."
Remember the "The Suit" that is screaming about support isn't the poor bastard that has to work on it. I am.
Unless, of course, you're already running an account that doesn't have admin rights and then using "runas" when you're running something that does need admin privs XP has "restricted tokens" - which is a way that an app can be run at lower privs than your current one. Not as secure as running as non-admin and using "runas", but if you weren't doing that. Have a look at http://weblogs.asp.net/hernandl/archive/2004/12/30/runasadmin.aspx (blog entry that lists some of the various run-as-lower "shims")
So how is this easier than using "runas"? No need to enter a password - just run whatever app with lower privs and it can't do the things you (running as admin) can do - like write to program and windows directories.
I swear all these troll submitters/mods have never worked in industry... ever.
They will switch to Vista for a multitude of reasons, one main one is support from Microsoft. Sounds "dumb" to you kiddies saying "OMG JUST GO LINUX", but go get a real job or an internship and you'll see.
It is impacting non DRM files.
But even if it weren't, DRM - by definition - must have a negative impact on users. It takes up resources that could otherwise be put to use in the interest of the user.
Ubuntu is on a 6 month cycle, not one year.
Vista just came out this year, and all the MS-hating Shitslotters keep puling about it's sales not beating out WinXP already.
Guess what? Even XP didn't start beating out Windows 2000 or XP in less than a year. Hell, I still know people using Windows 98.
BTW, I can't figure out why those crappy OS's from Apple and Teh Lunix keep coming out with new versions. Obviously nobody bothered to take the time and energy to write OSX and Teh Lunix right the first time around, eh?
>>They will switch to Vista for a multitude of reasons, one main one is support from Microsoft.
Msft doesn't support their software worth crap. Everybody that I know either goes to local tech support people, or asks a friend, or googles for an answer.
I've used both Leopard and Vista and you simply cannot compare the two. Windows and Mac OS X have both needed a lot of RAM to avoid running inefficiently due to swap usage for years now. That's just a given. However I have always seen a much greater improvement from upgrading RAM in a Mac than I ever have from upgrading RAM in a PC. Macs just seem to use extra RAM more efficiently. Your Macs should all have at least 1GB of RAM already (most iMacs can handle at least 2GB, some can take 3GB, newest ones can take 4GB).
Your summer iMacs should be able to take 3GB. No one should expect to be able to upgrade a computer to a new version of any modern operating system without needing more RAM than was required to run the previous version acceptably. RAM is fairly inexpensive these days, it's silly to be complaining about needing to add more of something that will give such a good return in terms of performance. I always tell people to max out the RAM in Macs because the return on investment years down the line is massive. Macs generally have a longer useful lifetime than PCs in my experience. The biggest single factor in their lifetime performance is having adequate RAM.
Design-wise you can't compare the two either. Trying to get through Vista's interface was a painfully excruciating experience. There were parts of the control panel that simply seemed unfinished, like a beta product. The whole navigation structure in places like the control panel made no sense whatsoever. I actually got lost a couple of times and had to start over. The "new and improved" interface on applications like Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 7 is absolutely insane, breaking all previous rules about where things are supposed to be on the interface. That's not Vista-specific, but it goes along with their new anti-user interface design that seems to apply to all new software coming from of Microsoft. I found the Vista interface to actually be worse than XP's default interface, which amazed the heck out of me because I didn't realize that was possible.
In contrast, even with the major changes in Leopard, I had very little trouble finding my way around every nook and cranny of the system, working with networking, adjusting settings in System Preferences and so forth. It performed admirably even on my old iBook G4, a system that's been discontinued for about 3 years. I can't imagine a 3 month old iMac having any problems with it unless it has the bare minimum amount of RAM installed. If you have a whole lab full of new iMacs with only 512MB of RAM installed, well, you reap what you sow, as the saying goes. Windows XP has always worked equally poorly with its minimum of 128MB.
And let's see, you declare that your workplace has decided not to upgrade to an operating system that was just released two weeks ago until some of your third-party software supports it a little better. It seems like you're making out like this is a bad thing. I wouldn't upgrade any workplace to a new version of any operating system until it's been out for at least six months. That's just common sense. That allows time for third-party applications and drivers to catch up, and initial bugs to be worked out of the release. Which by the way has already started with Leopard. I hear they already fixed a lot of issues with the new firewall that people were complaining about.
With Vista, we get jack squat in terms of improvements, and a lot of parts of the system are actually worse than XP. More DRM, horrible user interface, etc. With Leopard, we get an operating system with slightly higher system requirements than the previous version (for the first time since OS X was first released), and hundreds of new features that are actually useful. Pick any Mac user and there will be at least 10 of those new features they will end up using every day for as long as they use Leopard. Time Machine is frickin' awesome all by itself. Nobody can fail to understand how to restore their files through the incredibly intuitive interface, and interfaces like that give us a goo
Even a cursory google would confirm this for you. Either accept it as a given for the sake of argument, or don't bother responding. This is the last I have to say on the matter.
A protected path DRM implementation has to be operational at all times by definition. If it isn't operational, the path isn't protected. You'd be somewhat correct in the case of the old style windows media DRM; that could (in theory) be written in a modular way similar to decoding plugins. However, it would still be taking up drive space without giving any benefit to the owner of the drive.
If Microsoft stood up to Sony/whoever backs HD DVD, they'd have to either give up the draconian DRM or the Windows platform. Guess which they'd choose?
Regardless, we'll all still be able to see the content, because all DRM is cracked if it protects anything worth having.
You can get license servers for your network with Vista. Your clients then only have to contact your license server and not Microsoft directly.
Will we ever see a Windows 7? They had so much trouble and so many rewrites to deliver a working copy of Vista and it has been pretty much rejected by the consumer. Will Microsoft be able to recover from this lose of positive spin? Surely, after such setbacks, hardware and software makers must be thinking twice about exclusive plans to support only Windows. Free platforms such as Linux are better than Windows in many ways and constantly improving. OS X already makes Windows look completely pathetic in most ways and it now runs on PC hardware. Virtualization has gotten really good. If Linux or OS X can convince hardware and software developers, especially game developers, to support them then Windows is in big trouble. AMD/ATI has already made it clear that they're going to be more Linux friendly.
My prediction is that Windows 7 will be released much later than predicted and be no bigger a hit than Vista has been and that Linux and OSX use will continue to increase. Most people will still have a copy of Windows but it'll be a pirate copy or an old copy and it'll be ran in virtualization and only used for those not-ported apps. By the time Windows 7 is released virtualization will be so seamless that most users won't even notice Windows running. OS X will dominate the high dollar market while a custom, nice looking, and easy to use Linux distro will dominate the low end market and servers. Quite possibly the low end will be little more than a terminal for running hybrid web-apps.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Why is this news. This is the second company that I have worked for that bypasssed windows 2000 used winnt 4.0 untill xp came out. So why would vista be anything different?
I mean, really, if you've only been on XP a couple of years, what's the benefit of upgrading to Vista?
XP was released in 2001
Windows 2000 SP4 was released in 2003
Windows 2000 "SP5" ("rollup 1" for SP4) was released in 2005, because many companies were still using 2000 in 2005.
Windows 2000 extended support continues through 2010
Vista was released in 2006
Windows XP is going to have at least one more service pack in 2008
I predict that Windows XP will have a service pack or a rollup in 2010, and companies running XP now don't really need to face any kind of forced upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 until then.
Windows XP extended support will continue beyond that point.
Hah.
2k was better than XP. I see vista and Windows 7 being a similar situaton...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I personally don't mind Vista if I'm only required to admin my personal box, but there are still too many hotfixes that are difficult to deploy remotely in their crazy .msu format (psexec doesn't seem to like playing with .msu files), and those hotfixes are required to perform some basic remote management functionality that was fixed long ago in XP.
/renamecomputer parameter in netdom.exe on Vista (among other issues).
That's why I'm looking forward to Vista as an IT Admin. MS can market "migrate now and we'll give you updates electronically!" as much as they want, but they refuse to give out hotfixes via MS Update (regression testing, oh how I despise thee!), and I hate hate HATE having to figure out clunky solutions to deploy those updates to my unwilling "beta" testers at work just to fix the
Short version. I wait for SP1 because of hotfixes. SP1 network deployment is easy, slipstreaming SP1 into new builds is easy, and SP1 includes all hotfixes so I don't have to ask permission to fix my system.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
Yep, we got also tired of Windows, activation, costs etc. Now we're running all machiness on Ubuntu and we're very happy with it.
Let's see, the XP Start Bar often requires me to go moving my mouse everywhere, including moving Programs down a directory in the tree. With my Mac, everything is in Applications (which I dragged to my Doc so I can right-click and grab it) and my regularly used applications sit on my Dock. They are in the same place each time I use them, so launching them doesn't make them go hiding. My XP task bar moves things around as more applications load, forcing me to go hunt for the Window. My OS X Apps are where they launched, I can drag them elsewhere if I want (with visual sliding around cues that make it easy without thinking). If I run an App and think I'll use it later, I choose Right-click and keep in Dock, if I stop using it, I drag it off.
:)
With OS X, when I plug in a USB device, it just starts working. A USB Key just adds itself to Finder, in a nice bank of Volumes to work with. With Windows, it grabs a drive letter, but requires a drop-down everywhere to use, and if I have multiple keys, it can be tricky to figure out what is going on.
If I plug in a new mouse on my Mac, into the keyboard's built in USB Hub, the optical light powers up and the Mac keeps working, now with Mouse. My XP machines always want to pop up bubbles and fill me in on their progress with mounting the device, finding drivers, etc. I'm really not interested in how much work it is for XP to use the USB device, I want to use it. OS X turns in on, XP wants to have a conversation.
I plugged in my Camera, and it launched some non-iPhoto app to look at the pictures. I launched iPhoto, which asked me if I wanted to make it launch when I plug my Camera in, and I click yes. Now I plug my camera in, it verifies my settings (auto copy, delete off the camera) and it gets my pictures and helps me organize events, albums etc. I have a Shutterfly and Facebook plugin, so I can choose to auto-export my pictures to those services. If I want to create a photo album for say, my son's great grandmother, I create a book, drag the pictures into it, click Buy, and it shows up at her house.
That part isn't eye candy, but it's part of the general "Apple Approach" of making the easy stuff easy. I assume that there are similar programs to iLife in the Windows world, but I haven't seen them. I have a few good friends in IT that are Windows guys. Their wives keep asking them for software to make video clips of their kids to put online. After I bought iMovie '08, I grabbed my tapes, imported my video, and had 4 or 5 little movies up online to show people, which was great. I cut 60 minutes of footage down to a 60s-90s clip easily and fast, added some transitions, and exported. If I was on an Intel Mac and not a PowerMac G5, it would have even exported fast, instead it took a while, but it looked good.
The only eye candy I can think of is the zooming to Doc and fast user switching, plus the Doc -> "Poof" when I drag something off and the doc items moving out of the way when I drag something there. That "eye candy" all gives me visual cues, and I like it. I feel like XP is focused on what it is doing (new USB device detected, USB device named "X" looking for drivers, driver found, loading, etc), not what I am doing. I really don't care HOW OS X, Linux, or Windows load my USB device, just that it shows up and I can use it. OS does that for me.
Sliding out drawers and sheets are GREAT UI devices, and Sheets kick ass compared to modal dialogs that float around. The desktop design metaphors are wonderful. I feel like I get almost nothing done when using my Windows machine compared to my Mac, and I'm a techie through and through. But with my Mac I have a series of easy to use tools that play nicely, in part because of the BSD internals. SSHKeyChain.dmg manages my SSH keys, and when I SFTP via BBEdit or SSH via Terminal, they pick them up for me and I don't need to use passwords. That's just cool. I never felt like my Windows apps cooperated that way.
YMMV, but I'm a Unix guy at heart. OS X gives me a great desktop environment that plays natively with Unix-land, without wanting to "chat." It's a great tool. I feel like Windows XP wants to be my equal partner in life.
Alex
Alex
you may have to hope for a fast fix it your key gets blacklisted by mistake and most of your systems go in to limited functionality mode.
The best way to hurt a competitor will be to get their Vista key blacklisted. I am sure foreign nations and Al Queda would be quite pleased to see western businesses suffer because their Vista systems are in limited functionality mode.
When will the first virus spread that takes down a company by enabling limited functionality mode? It will be quite simple to disable the host's ability to connect to the key server, and since it is a passive thing it will be difficult to detect on networks that it has happened.
We never buy Macs with minimum RAM at work. It doesn't matter if it's a desktop, laptop or server. The iMacs I referenced have 2GB of RAM. The system with the least RAM I've discussed is my wife's Mac Pro. She's smart enough to reset her video settings after an update. She showed me the difference. I'm 100% certain it's swap related. She did install the 10.5.1 update, but I do not know if that made any difference with her frame rate. I can tell that people saying it's faster are not using most of the new features. If I don't turn anything new on, it only consumes more memory without a huge drop in speed unless it has to swap out a lot. My wife is not using spaces, time machine or any other new features. It is totally swap based. I was careful not to speculate on the speed decrease beyond World of Warcraft because I can't quantify it with numbers. In fact, as we went through so much hell installing it I'm trying to not focus on that system. It's not because I'm dumb like some people have implied with their ridiculous statements about not letting it INDEX SPOTLIGHT. It does that automatically right after it's up. I always let it do that by itself. Plus that is a one time process and then it just updates as needed.As for speed decreases, time machine causes a lot of file copies between the primary disk and whatever secondary disk on a very frequent schedule by default with no way to change it. It's either on, off or you're doing it manually. Obviously like the swap issue, anything causing massive disk io is going to slow down an OS that has to swap on many systems during upgrading. I also realize that operating systems sometimes need more RAM when upgrading. However, it is not fair to say the new one runs faster if it needs more resources than the last one in a significant quantity. It is NOT faster on the SAME hardware. It needs more hardware just as Windows does. I'm sure this opinion could be debated. As a counter point, Linux and BSD rarely need to have double the RAM to run properly. I realize that Mac users were probably blow away by my Vista vs OS X comments. I feel that way and I can't help it. I don't hate apple, but I'm not in the reality distortion field any longer. Being treated like shit when you're trying to get a working Leopard disk didn't help me one bit. My boss was told that boot camp was still in beta in Leopard! Another person was told that apple wouldn't fix their laptop because they used bootcamp in Leopard on a new Mac that shipped with Leopard! Something is seriously wrong at the local apple stores. As for usability, I would say that OS X has gone backwards on the issue with Leopard. Transparency makes things harder to read. Many of the friendly system preferences are now buried. The firewall + services area used to have nice checkboxes, now it's impossible to enable/disable services in the firewall admin which moved to security. You can do an all or nothing block (minus critical services, see 10.5.1) or enable applications. I have to go CLI to actually configure ipfw. That is very annoying and while I am experienced configuring ipfw in FreeBSD and MidnightBSD, I'd rather have a nice GUI to do it in. Mac OS X server has a very nice interface for that. (tiger) Luckily the transparency is disabled on old Macs. The dock is harder to see what applications are running. I use mine on the left side with auto hide. The little white dots do not have good contrast anymore. Spotlight's new window that looks like finder is extremely annoying. Apple changed things to change things. They were obviously influenced by Vista and if you don't think so look again. Transparency is just one example. There is quite a bit of feature parity as well. I'm not the only person who's said it's slower at work. Every Mac user I know sees it. I realize some of you are flat out lying about the speed decrease because you love apple. Some of you might not be seeing it legitimately because the workflow you have is not going to trigger it. I work for the computer science department at a University; not like we're all idiots on a computer. There are some benefits to upgrading to Leopard. Spaces, Time Machine (if you can pay the price in sync times), and the new Terminal for instance.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
No its not an Anti-MS that I am about. It is an Anti-BS world that I am about. Running a company on lies and FUD like MS does I cannot support.
No real outsourced help desk vendor would ever suggest the customer do something to decrease their reliance upon said vendor.Why would I NOT decrease a customer's reliance on a vendor's who's OS is in-secure and broken by design? I serve our customers NOT MS. MS is not our customer. They still stay our customer when they are running something else. They are happier and not spending as much money on their systems. Savings and stability a good selling point. Explain to me why a help desk vendor would not suggest to their customer to something better.
If you do, in fact, work for an outsouced IT provider, you're likely near the bottom of the totem pole, and absolutely not in management.Actually I am the Senior Engineer and CTO of the company. I am second in command and only answer to the Owner and the Customers. I've been doing this work for over thirty years now. Yes I am one of the ponied tailed old farts. I've worked with Windows since NT 3.51 and was a MS fanboy until XP and saw how MS was screwing their customers and breaking their OS by design to so they and their partners could make more money.
Your company, in reality, does not have any official polices to steer customers away from Vista. Am I right?No your wrong. Like I said I am second in command I write the friggin policies! Also the one boss I have agrees with me! It not that we don't support Vista we will. We just try to talk them out of it before they buy. If they have to have Windows then we suggest XP. If we build a desktop we build it with XP. We also offer an alternative. Whats wrong with a more efficient way to work? Whats wrong with doing away with spyware, malware, and all the other nasties that come with MS products by replacing it with something better? I serve our customer not MS.
Like it or not, Microsoft is good for business, especially if you're in the business of providing support or consulting for their platform.I will agree with you on one point. Yes if you are in the business on a per hour level for support then yes it is good for business because by being broken by design the customer is calling you more thus spending more money with you. You can make a commision on selling anti-virus and setting it up, so on and so on. Selling a bad product just to make more money to me is just another form of theft. Sorry I do have morals. So does my boss.
We sell our phone and online help service on a flat rate per user per month charge. If Joe Users calls in one time or a hundred times the charge is the same. We sell server maintenance service on a flat per server rate. So with this model the less things are broken the more money we make. Efficiency and stability is what drives this model. Not "We'll make more if its broke."
At the end of the month I have to make a maintenance report showing where the time at the NOC is spent. We are about 40% Sun, 20% Linux and 40% Windows servers. Yet 70% of the time is spent on the Windows servers (Terminal Servers & Exchange) wheres the savings with Windoze? Whats wrong with decreasing our reliance upon said vendor if said vendor is costing us money? Less time at the NOC more profit! More uptime! a happier customer. The truth is a customer just wants it to work and be running.
I worked for a company once with an attitude like yours. I quit when we put in a system I knew would continue to break and cost the customer a ton of money. I pointed out the flaws in the system and provided a better way. My boss admitted that my way was more stable but his reply was "Just think of the money we'll make!" I replied "sorry I'm not a theft."
You respond civilly to ad hominem attacks. You use reason and intelligent thought. Furthermore, those who have a clue agree with you. You are obviously new here.
Your Slashdot user ID is hereby revoked.
This isn't the sig you're looking for...
Either the application or Sun's Java is NOT written properly and VIOLATES security that it does not violate on OSX/Linux/ETC.
The big thing I noticed with flash between Nix and Vista, is in Vista installing Flash is Global and on Nix, it is per user. Some users can have flash while others do not unlike Vista where the install applies to all users.
I wonder if Java is the same... I'll have to check in on that one.
The truth shall set you free!