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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?
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....
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.
It makes the hardware look old.
Here is what the cybermen would say about windows Vista.
DEELEEEEEEEETE!
TSS
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.
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What relibility issues should I be seeing and in what way is it a pain in the ass? I must be doing something wrong because my copy of Vista doesn't exhibit any of the things you speak of.
it still requires 2x the ram that xp needed, which no significant advantages.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
Or maybe, just maybe, Microsoft released an unfinished operating system, which was a spectacular failure, and now everybody is trying to avoid paying a huge chunk of cash because there is a good chance Microsoft will try to wipe the problems under the carpet and get something better out ASAP.
Or in other words:
Vista is the new Millenium.
no, it's reliable and a step in the right direction for security. it just takes way too much system resources to do what is essentially a simple thing.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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?
it's security may be cumbersome, granted, but it's far from unsecurable. i'm guessing you're one of those who've never used it because you all beat the same misinformed drum.
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.
Then your hardware is bad and should be replaced by whom ever you bought it from.
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.
I think you'll see a lot more switching to Linux. Anyone who hasn't tried Linux is probably in for a shock when they do. They'll be kicking themselves for not trying it sooner.
Linux is good. Damn good. For most people it will do everything they could ever want to do and more.
True, there are a few apps that won't run under Crossover or Wine and you have to run under Windows. But the OpenOffice suite is great... and free. Browsing and e-mail are wonderful. The whole multiple desktop thing makes working on multiple applications at once easy and productive. Probably that in itself is the biggest thing I miss whenever I have to do anything on a Windows box.
But again, anyone that hasn't at least tried Linux owes it to themselves to download a "live" CD image so they can try it out without disturbing their Windows installation at all. Just boot from the live CD and check it out. You might even have fun and discover a whole new world and certainly at a lot lower cost (i.e. 100% free) than you would ever spend on Windows and Office.
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."
Really, I though that the new millenium was Abbles Leopard...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
So does Leopard, and do you hear people whine about that? OSX is a memory hog too.
-- Cheers!
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!
I think you underestimate what most people do on their PCs, especially at work. Most business PCs run many proprietary pieces of software that will only work properly on Windows. Admittedly, this could be solved with Citrix / WTS but it involves lots of business change (plus served apps generally blow for general usability, especially when the network gets busy).
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)
User accounts controls have no way to add program users use everyday.
Windows defender doesn't care if yor using another virus guard it demands to be updated.
Hardware in back water hick towns are mostly software controlled fake ware which Vista refuses to run.
Vista seizes the computer you will not be allowed to do any work what so ever until it's back ground processes which are running in normal mode are done.
MS can not even honestly compare Vista with Windows XP with all patches side by side and show Vista is more secure.
Then there is aero the most useless program i ever had crash on me daily.
then there is the fact Ctrl alt del keys sequence is now treated as a request not a fact to stop an irritant program.
Oh and did you notice the Vista PR department stopped trying to dis Linux. Now they are trying to litigate FUD of owning various patents they refuse to show the public at large what they are. SCO tried this ploy too.
Then there is the H-1B Visa workers that are indentured servants to MS unable to apply at Google or other tech companies. All because ms doesn't want to pay the salaries US workers demand after going into debt through overpriced colleges of America.
Then there is the fact they will not play fair in the markets using exclusive contracts to lock out competitors. ( can you buy Linux on a store shelf now?)
It is an overall thing it is not just one thing that makes people buy a product.
then there is the fact MS is going to sell a version of vista that works on lesser PCs.
So even the company that produced it has lost faith in the product.
I was an investor in MS stock now i will make sure my investments have nothing to do with them! I lost ~ 500 USD due to MS not wanting to play fair in the international markets. I divested and will not recommend their stock to any one!
TSS
2012 == End of The World
Because I used the word Vista in a post and didn't say negative things about it.
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.
A lot of small businesses still depend on random bits of domain-specific Win16 software. They are going to be in for a shock when they try to upgrade to 64-bit and realise that one of the many stupid things that AMD did when they extended the x86 architecture was make it impossible to run a 16-bit application on a 64-bit OS. Fortunately for them, WINE runs win16 apps very well on 32-bit *NIX.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That "spectacular failure" is selling about 300,000 copies per day. IOW - MSFT brings in more revenue in one week is OS sales than RedHat and Novel do in 52 weeks.
I see that you haven't refuted any of the items on his list, though.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There's a old saying in the business: "What Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away". Most of the performance gains we make in hardware will be sapped away by the next Windows release, almost without exception. And while I don't think Vista is a horrible trainwreck of an OS, there aren't enough worthwhile changes to consider moving my XP machines to it considering the cost (funds and hardware). The fact is, my 4-year old XP machine does just as much as the brand new Vista machine here, and I dont see any benefit.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I have a similar question. Why's it modded "insightful?"
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
>Then your hardware is bad and should be replaced by whom ever you bought it from.
While there's a chance it's bad, I've had similar experiences with Vista. My previous laptop met a sudden end (was run over - don't ask), and I had to replace it. All my options were Vista, so I decided to leave it on the machine for a while and see if I could deal with it. I *tried* to give it a fair shake, I really did, but the persistant crashes while running and lockups (primarily in/out of standby/hibernate), abysmal video performance with some games, and unfamiliarity of where everything was located finally caused me to throw in the towel. Back to dual-boot XP and Ubuntu, and is absolutely rock solid.
I've never had a particular plan for migrating my house up to Vista. I see *nothing* I want in the features (bloaty but shiny interface? more tightly integrated DRM? the opportunity to shell out a bunch more cash on OS upgrades? err, no...) - XP serves my needs just fine. When XP no longer does what I need, I'll look to see if Win7 is where it needs to be. I doubt it, so most likely my machine will spend more time booted to linux and less to something from Redmond.
Then why does it run well on my system? Intel DG33TL mother board. 2GB RAM 300 GB SATA HD 1.6 Ghz Dual Core Pentium ?
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!
I had to get a laptop for my dad. Apple was out because there price point was just way to high. So it left me with 2 options, Linux or Windows. My laptop has Ubuntu on it and I let my dad play around with it. But, he wound up getting Vista Ultimate 64-bit. What a @)(#$($ nightmare it was installing drivers (Printer, UPS, etc). The actual drivers for the devices integral to the notebook were fine though.
Vista is so slow. My Ubuntu (7.10) notebook (P4 2.8GHz, 512MB RAM, 5400 RPM drive) boots in 1/4 the time it takes his system (T7200 Core 2 Duo, 7200 RPM hard drive, 2GB RAM) to boot. They really need to change the name of Vista to ME II to fully capture the user experience.
I haven't had a single enterprise customer that I consultant for enquire about upgrading to Vista. One of them is making noises about switching to Linux and just using Terminal Services for any Windows apps they need to make available.
What brand of laptop and what specs did it have?
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.
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.
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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...
Yes - this is exactly the kind of thing that I was talking about. One of the financial companies I consult for run a number of Win16 applications - and these are paid for by subscription! I guess "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" was taken seriously! There are other issues too though, and in this world there are many third party Windows PKI services used that don't work under WINE properly (if at all) either. So while the application may be web-based or in Java, the authentication/authorisation system is broken.
You realize, I hope, that "troll" is not a magic word that negates his points. I'm not surprised that you haven't tried to defend vista, or any of the previous dismal efforts from Microsoft. Some battles just aren't worth fighting are they, sunshine?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
In other words: every OS could boast the same sale figures... if it came preinstalled in every PC.
RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.
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.
ZOMG, I bet that if I googled "Linux" and "problems" I wouldn't get any results huh? Oh... wait... actually... I got 102,000,000 results. And for "vista" and "problems" I only got 34,300,000. Hmm. Yeah. That's right. shut up.
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Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You know their was a reason why I put the words "Modern Hardware" in my original post...
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 - $1500 +
How did they break multi-monitor support?
.
But the notion that it will actually be ready by 2009 or 20010 seems unlikely, based on recent history..
.
Yes, I made a typo in the second year. I noticed it in the preview, but left it in out of cuteness. Think of it as my version of typing M$.
That's "Mr. AssHat" to you Microsoft brainwashed nerd.
Perhaps you should pay closer attention...
I've just gone through another round in the gruelling marathon to crush MSIE where I work (I do security at a small-medium security dotcom - in the range 250-500 users.) In turns out that whilst we have one major internal app that's IE-only, apart from that everything works in Firefox. This makes it much easier these days for those of us techie types lucky enough to be trusted to run Linux on our workstations. I use rdesktop (and stunnel) to work on our Windows servers, Outlook calendaring still requires me to use that vile PoS, Outlook Web Access, but everything else is seamless. At the moment we're XPSP2 for the vast majority of end-user machines, and we won't even consider allowing Vista *anywhere* until well into the SP1 cycle. And if that sucks... MS' last hope will be Backcomb or whatever the next vapourware Windows client's called. I have a theory about that: I think it's going to suck. And I think some significant fraction of the people not employed to be directly hands-on technical, but who spend a lot of time in meetings with programmers, coders, architects and whatnot are going to start noticing more and more Linux machines on the tables, and will start asking for it themselves.
MS are at precisely that agonising point of the lifecycle Apple were at in the early 90s, before they started doodling ideas for Copland. They need to ditch the legacy baggage - they really need to start from scratch, build a complete new OS with a clean simple elegant design, then hack up support for old software. (MS have it easier in that there's now virtualisation, admittedly.)
But even more than an architectural reset, I think they need a mindset and culture reset. There used to be a bit of a buzz about demerging MS into separate OS, Office, general software corps. Right now, I'm more convinced than ever that the final end-point for Microsoft will be as a vendor of application software, networked app services, and an awful lot of consulting, all running on a Free (or forked BSD-like, more likely) kernel. But that's not going to happen until the current business model has been seen to fail through it's inability to produce software that does what users want - a pretty basic concept - and that's going to take, ooh, at least half-a-dozen major release cycles (two or three decades.)
My employer's lucky in having relatively little investment in massive fat-client l-o-b Windows apps, and instead delivering virtually all our internal custom s/w (ordering, provisioning, customer service & support etc) systems as web apps. OpenOffice is the magic key. The only piece missing is routine mass hardware support, and the wind has finally switched direction on that, just as it has on DRM'd music.
Remember, you read it hear first ;)
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*?
Thats not modern hardware, thats brand new shiny expensive hardware. Modern hardware is the hardware that everyone *without* Vista is using.
I think you missed the point. I can google "Flamingo" and "problems" and get over a million results - does this mean a million people are having problems with their flamingo?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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.
I also don't work for Microsoft.
Erris is twitter, and he is both a troll and a liar, and I *have* ritually disproved all of his points at length.
Better for you?
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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.
126.99 Intel BOXDG33TLM LGA 775 Intel G33 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail 54.99 Crucial 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail 74.99 Intel Dual-Core E2140 Allendale 1.6GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Processor - Retail 84.99 Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD3200KSRTL 320GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - Retail (Not the actual drive in my system - drive is a Maxtor 7L300S0 300 GB) How is that expensive?
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.
If it makes you feel better, you can pretend Microsoft pays me $4.50 a day to argue with morons on teh internets.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
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.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
... 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
Vista is just as bad. The first time I used Vista, I tried to copy a file from a network share to my desktop, and it wouldn't let me because of permissions or something. I couldn't work it out, and eventually had to copy the file using a USB flash drive instead.
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.
That "spectacular failure" is selling about 300,000 copies per day.
Well:
Home users don't tend to get much choice in the matter, they get whatever the salesperson at the local branch of the big computer chain tells them to get.
Larger buisness users buying OEM may as well buy vista since it won't cost them any more than XP and they get downgrade rights which they can excercise using thier activation free corp media/key.
Afaict volume license customers can't buy older versions they have to buy the latest and excercise thier downgrade rights.
So of course vista will make lots of sales regardless of if it is any good or not.
Despite all this smaller buisnesses have managed to place enough pressure for major vendors to start offering XP as well. That IMO speaks volumes about how badly received vista has been.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
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
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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!
You would hear, except the reality distortion field disrupts sound waves!
You're missing the point. To run your typical office PC with XP today costs... nothing, because you've already got it.
To get Vista to run acceptably, you not only have to buy Vista, you also have to buy all the hardware at the prices you mentioned, which gains you... nothing, if the application you use to do real work all run at the same speed anyway.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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...
"Most business PCs run many proprietary pieces of software that will only work properly on Windows."
Let me make one change to make that 100% accurate.
"Most business PCs run many proprietary pieces of software that will only work properly on Windows XP."
If you have to upgrade everyone's software to use Vista anyway, there is a great opportunity to leave all of Windows behind for good. Especially at $400 per seat. Plus the gamer level graphics card. My work XP box isn't going to run Vista Business. Basic would work. Maybe. I'd have to look up to see if the embedded graphics can handle it.
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.
What is so bad about Vista when running on modern hardware?
Activaton, WGA and Spyware. Because of these three items MS insisted on I have switched from Windows to Linux for a server and OS X on the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on. I don't like it when a company treats me like a criminal when I buy a product from them!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
Please do not judge Linux by Ubuntu. I have NEVER had more trouble getting the basics to "just work" as I had under Ubuntu. If you want it to "just work" and have Crossover built in for your Windows Apps, Try Xandros(free trial here). If you want it to "just work" and don't want to spend any money,try PCLinuxOS or Mandriva Free. I know this will probably kill my karma, but IMHO any of the above would be better for switching someone from Windows than Ubuntu. For all the hype about Ubuntu, I've never had more pain trying to get everything running from any other OS, except maybe Fedora 4(shudder).
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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)
A lot times a business selects the app, the vertical sells them the hardware and OS , no unapproved software to be installed, and no unapproved updates. The computer and OS is purchased to run the app not the other way around.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Then there is the fact they will not play fair in the markets using exclusive contracts to lock out competitors. ( can you buy Linux on a store shelf now?)
Yes you can grab Linux off a store shelf to buy, at least I can. I even bought a PC with Linux preinstalled. MS, where competition is looked at as bad, has played unfairly but Linux is available in stores.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Dude I so agree with you just the other day I downloaded some windows software and saved it on my desktop. Next I right clicked it and then left clicked "run as" admin, The freakin computer told me that admin didn't have permission to open a file on a users desktop! In Linux the superuser root can go anywhere and do anything, in windows the superuser admin is pretty lame! Oh wait your talking about Linux, I thought you were talking about windows DOH.
Wait a minute, why would a newbie user want to transfer a file between different partitions for? Separate Partitions are pretty advanced concepts for a newbie, well outside the default installation parameters.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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.
That "spectacular failure" is selling about 300,000 copies per day.
How many of those copies are on brand new PC versus plain copies of Vista off a store shelf? Then can a person get a PC with XP installed instead or do they have to jump through hoops to install XP? This one I can answer, PC OEMs are shipping new PCs with XP after customers demanded it.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I am quite satisfied with Mandriva 2008 x86_64 on my Dell XPS 410 box that came pre-loaded with Ubuntu. I sprung for the commercial "Powerpack" version because the proprietary Nvidia drivers, Virtual Box, LinDVD, and other 'non-free' applications just work.
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?
Results 1 - 10 of about 162,000,000 for windows problems. (0.16 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 101,000,000 for linux problems.
Results 1 - 10 of about 95,000 for windows "sucks ass"
Results 1 - 10 of about 44,000 for linux "sucks ass".
Results 1 - 10 of about 32,300,000 for vista problems. (0.13 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,220,000 for RHEL problems. (0.15 seconds
So What's your point?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Ctrl-Alt-Delete operates in the same way as under XP.
it doesn't work the same on all of our XP machines on some it brings up task manager on others it brings up a choice screen and the default is lock computer. The second is cool because you can Ctrl-Alt-Delete enter and the machine is locked.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
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'm running Vista pre-installed on a brand new Sony UX390N, with 1GB of RAM and a solid state 32GB hard disk.
What's wrong with it? Let's see... Large file copies are inordinately slow--way slower than XP on the same hardware. Apps like Microsoft Office hang for up to a minute while the hard disk thrashes away on some unknown background process (undoubtedly to speed searches or something). The OS asks me literally seven times to confirm and click okay to things like trying to delete a file that I just created. Plugging in new hardware creates a bizarre cacaphony of dialog boxes and confirmations.
Video games pause and jerk suddenly when the disk starts its background processes--again, a feature that didn't exist in XP.
Microsoft seriously messed up the kernel frobbing or application priorities for large parts of Vista. Their naive approach to indexing the hard disk causes constant disk thrashing for a feature THAT STILL SUCKS ASS and cannot find anything that I'm really looking for. They've gratuitously moved nearly every operating system configuration setting or hid it behind three more layers of dialog boxes for no reason other than to treat me like I'm an idiot whose never used a computer before.
Every 10th time I reboot my computer, it informs me that I've changed my hardware (I haven't) and I need to reactivate. I ignore it, and you know what? It goes away the next time I boot. So it's a user insulting licensing process THAT DOESN'T EVEN WORK.
I bought the Ultimate addition with the promise of killer applications provided free throughout Vista's lifetime. I don't consider two crappy games to be worth the money.
I was a serious Windows fan. Hell, I wrote the Windows 2000 MCSE security guide for Microsoft Press. But I'll never buy another Microsoft product for my personal use until that company has knelt down before the alter of its customers and contritely begged forgivingness for such sins as license activation (even typing in CD keys), restricting virtualization for no reason, and their relentless attempt to build a software monoculture that excludes anything not coming Redmond.
They're Smith Corona in 1985, going out to their users and asking what new features their customers want on their typewriters because they've noticed that sales have flattened. Vista is just adding an LCD to a typewriter. It's not going to stop what's about to happen to Microsoft.
aka Matthew at SlashNOT/!
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
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.
I don't know from where people get phrases like "spectacular failure" that don't make sense in context. It's basic name-calling.
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?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Keep pretending anyone who does not hate Microsoft must work for them
Oh, I know that they have a lot of victims who don't realize just how bad they're getting screwed. Lots of people with MSCE "certifications" routinely cheer for the company that provides the problems from which they make their living.
I bet that simplifies your life enormously.
No, MSFT and the people it afflicts are nothing but amusement for me. I've been living MS-free since 1984.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Non free development does not work.
That's a bit of a stretch. I've used many operating systems and other commercial software products, and most of them worked just fine.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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 *
You sound a lot like a guy I knew who worked for DEC in 1988. He was talking about how these PC things were just a flash in the pan and how his customers loved VMS. The bottom line was that he just couldn't envision a future that made him irrelevant. It was a remarkable failure of vision for such a smart man. But no matter how hard he looked he couldn't see that his company's leaders were leading him down a path that led away from the one their customers trod.
Microsoft has a similar problem. The day of the desktop OS and the monolithic application is drawing to a close. Trying to shoehorn a desktop experience unchanged onto a tiny portable device rather than designing a special-purpose environment geared towards the function of the device is something that Microsoft still struggles with. The sheer hideousness of Vista and its palpable lack of value is still something that the Microsoft fanboys seem unwilling to accept. The bottom line is that Microsoft has stopped listening to its customers. It is providing "solutions" to problems no one has and ignores or provides unsightly hacks for problems its customers do have. In this, it is a lot like the late eighties DEC (or the early eighties IBM).
The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of programmers who actively despise Microsoft (many while they are forced to program for it) should say something to you. But your arrogance and sense of invincibility blinds you to the trouble Microsoft is in.
The good news for you is that, like IBM, Microsoft will not totally collapse - as an ex-boss of mine said, "It takes a lot of torpedoes and time to sink an aircraft carrier". But one thing is clear - no empire lasts forever, either in history or in business. They end up recreating themselves or collapsing. Microsoft has stopped recreating itself in any meaningful way. A learning company would have taken the DoJ prosecution as an opportunity to break itself apart, making several small organizations each of which could have expanded more rapidly into more diverse economic niches (and providing their non-management shareholders more profit). But Microsoft's management, riding their lumbering dinosaur of a company and being rich enough not to care about faster earnings growth, decided that herding a group of small, furry mammalian companies was much worse than keeping their current Apatosaurian ride. And they continue their ride to this day, being high enough on the back of the dinosaur that they don't notice that it has stopped moving; it might be still growing, because it's still able to reach nearby branches, but no one notices that it has found its way into a tar pit from which escape is either problematic or impossible.
As I said previously, Microsoft might not collapse entirely, but they will not emerge from the next ten or so years without taking a hard look at what's going wrong and making a firm commitment to reinventing themselves. It might not be Linux that is the root cause of this - it might be the failure of two major OS releases in a row (because I see few compelling features in W7); it might be a competitor coming up with a viable web-centric office suite; it might be an Apple multimedia convergence box that kicks Microsoft's ass in the media market; but one thing is clear: any company that has become as arrogant and customer deaf as Microsoft is heading for a fall - just like IBM and DEC before it.
That is all.
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.
It doesn't have an "up" button.
Leopard took 2.5 years after Tiger's release and was supposedly delayed because of problems with the iPhone.
The first machines are in a workgroup, the second machines are in a Domain. That's the difference. I prefer the Ctrl-Alt-Del for locking my machine too (it was default like that in WinNT4.0), but at home I simply use Windows-L. That locks it too.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
There are fewer people running it, and those who run it are usually fanbois. They will not admit it loudly.
Besides, while i didn't see Leopard, i doubt it is half as bad as Vista.
Does Leopard freeze while playing movies?
Does Leopard as the same stupid question about permissions every 5 minute?
Does Leopard choke on deleting many files?
Does Leopard lie about updates?
Does Leopard require you to hunt non existing drivers?
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
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.
Most Mac users accept that each new OS X release will require more RAM to run than the last. But each new release adds some highly visible and heavily promoted features - Expose, Dashboard, Spotlight, Time Machine etc...
Vista also adds new features, but Microsoft haven't done enough to convince the user-base that these features justify the increased system requirements. Worse still, a lot of users believe that the increased system requirements are down to evil DRM and other shenanigans.
Like it or not, Apple's 'crowd-pleasing' development and marketing works wonders on the average Mac user. Microsoft could learn a lot from Apple in that regard.
Why do you insist on defending him?
I haven't expressed any opinion about him at all.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I reply to whatever I feel like answering, whether or not the poster is an AC. Did you have some kind of point you were trying to make?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
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
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.
Most Mac users accept that each new OS X release will require more RAM to run than the last.
I have two "old" Macs. An Imac (end of 2005) and an iBook (April 2005). Both using PPC. Neither of them had max RAM (iBook is 768 Mb for example).
I installed Leopard on both 2 weeks ago. They work as before or even slightly better.
In my (admittedly limited experience) MacOSX does not requires extra RAM or more powerful CPUs to give acceptable performance when a new OS version is released.
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 can't understand it... I have setup windows domains ..exchange server... WSUS ..etc windows software with great success... but every time i touch something like linux it blows up in my face..
Bill says, "there there son, it's ok, you never have to me$$ with that bad old Linux again.".
Thanks, I'm and old Linux guy and Windows can throw me sometimes.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I'd prefer to be a Unix guy. Been doing Linux and (mainly) OpenBSD for years, but I never managed to find a job in the sector. *sigh*
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
As far as work goes, I understand proprietary stuff can be fairly prevalent, but I know in medical practices in my area only one computer (the biller's computer) needs proprietary Windows software - the rest can deal with whatever OS has a word processor and web browser. For my software business I only need to use Windows to create Flash stuff, and few customers need that. When I really think about it there are a surprising number of businesses that could get away with 50% or less o the Windows licenses they bought and not notice a difference.
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.
No, I meant Windows (to include 2K/XP etc) - most organisations with lots of 2K licences never made the leap of faith into XP as it was such a minor upgrade, and there is hardly a queue of people upgrading to Vista. While Vista sales are quite high, most businesses (that I've seen anyway) are choosing to downgrade their Business Premium licences into XP pro licences.
>>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.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
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.
So you won't use software with CD keys? Man, good luck with that.
It's as easy as $sudo apt-get a_clue. Try it, you'll love it!
Hey, I finally got my first freak! Took you long enough!
That's nothing; I used Open Office for about six months before I got Virtual Box installed on my system and installed my Office suite of choice (WordPerfect); I'd rate most of the office tools meh (they did the job, but were rather clunky), but the one thing that pushed me the hardest in abandoning Open Office altogether was Impress (the presentation unit). Sure the files were fairly small (usually between 200 and 300 kb for a 50+ page document), but they took forever (regularly 1 minute or more, though it seemed to be much longer) to load, and when the automatic save came through, they interrupted my work for at least 1 minute (which again seemed to take forever). Files in the WordPerfect Suite's Presentations can be twice as large for the same size document (in terms of pages), but they load instantly, and I am never even aware that the regular backups (which do happen) even occur because they don't disturb my work. Of course, the main thing that holds me with WordPerfect is that WordPerfect itself is just so damn efficient (i.e., always does what I need and want it to, doesn't assume anything, and has features that I cannot live without).
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.
Pnther ran quite well on my old G3 with 256 MB.
-- Cheers!
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
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."
What relibility issues should I be seeing and in what way is it a pain in the ass?
Try putting an exe on a network share and double clicking it.
100% consistent blue screen on all of our test boxes.
How that's a pain in the ass is left as an exercise for the reader.
Citation needed for evidence of vista-targeted botnets...
And Twitter / Erris / "Whateverthehellelseyou'regonnacallyourselftogetoutofcarmahell" STFU unless/until you can back up your allegations with these inconvenient little things called "facts" that we've been begging you for for a while. You ain't alone in hating Microsoft. I'm not going to evangelise either way (In fairness, I haven't used enough of Linux to compare knowledgeably due to issues getting my wireless USB working with every distro I've tried), but I sure ain't as vocal in my ignorance as you are!
Seriously... just once... put together a reasoned, proven post that details and documents (with evidence from a reputable source, not just a quote from Erris / A.N.Other sockpuppet) and you'll probably find that:
1) Your Karma will start to rise (not, it would seem, that you care)
2) The flamewars directed at you will cool (but history ain't on your side here, so don't expect it overnight!)
And before anyone suggests I've mistaken jcr for another Erris/Twitter... I haven't. The tirade above was just included here for 2 reasons
1) If posted on it's own it would be modded as off-topic (probably still will, but the first line here is the meat of the post)
2) To discourage (or attempt to discourage) the target from responding to me with either flame or BS.
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
'Twas the night before my thesis was due, and all through the room
Only one creature was stirring, intent in that gloom
In 5 hours, my final year honours thesis was due. I was pulling an all-nighter to finish it. Had simulation data everywhere, excel spreadsheets open, half a dozen pdfs, latex stuff,... Maybe about 30 windows were open in all. I don't believe in restarting often.
I'm minding my own business fighting excel 2007's new interface and all of a sudden a few of my windows disappear. Excel asks me if I want to save... Maybe this is like god coming to noah just before the flood. Ok. Yes. Save please. Then excel closes too.
Suddenly my screen is replaced with a pleasant background and a message:
Windows is downloading updates. Please wait.
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!
Oh vista, why can't you tell that I'm using the computer; and that even though its 6 am, I don't want to install your updates right now but thanks? Even if you just asked me "Oh by the way - I kind of want to close all your programs and restart. You're not doing anything important, right?".
It wouldn't be so bad if word and excel didn't take 20 minutes to start up. (They decided it was important to 'configure for the first time' again).
'No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them' - Dave Sim
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!
When Vista was installed, it asked you whether you wanted to automatically download and apply updates, some of which require a restart. You said yes. Now, you're complaining that Vista automatically downloads and installs your updates, some of which require a restart.
Mmhmm.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien