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More Evidence That XP is Vista's Main Competitor
Ian Lamont writes "Computerworld is reporting that Windows XP Service Pack 3 runs MS Office 10% faster than XP SP2 — and is 'considerably faster' than Vista SP1. XP SP3 isn't scheduled to be released until next year, but testers at Devil Mountain Software — the same company which found Vista SP 1 to be hardly any faster than the debut version of Vista — were able to run some benchmarking tests on a release candidate of XP SP3, says the report. While this may be great news for XP owners, it is a problem for Microsoft, which is having trouble convincing business users to migrate to Vista."
If Microsoft were to use the same business model as Apple and charge for the service packs, then it wouldn't be the same issue. But the problem there is that the additions the users get via the Apple updates are far superior than the Microsoft ones. Though being your own competitor isn't healthy in any industry.
Game developers need to start migrating to OpenGL! Then they could also create Linux versions of their games, and voila - we don't need Windows anymore :)
I honestly do not recall any distro upgrade since, say, 94, which resulted in a slowdown of the computers I use. Maybe you could reconsider your choice of OSs?
Recently my parents gave me $100 as a birthday gift, and according with them I should use it to buy a new operating system for my computer. I have been living happily with Windows 98 for several years, but I don't feel like moving to XP or Vista or Linux. I have tried some expensive Linux distributions in the past, but they didn't work very well and I came back to my nice Windows 98 OS. My current setup boots in 3-5 minutes, which is better than Vista, afaik. I can surf the internet, play games, write emails and so on. But since my parents demand a new OS, I'm confused. Could the Slashdot crowd help me on this delicate matter? Thanks in advance.
Seeing the users that have Vista just make the rest of us realize that Vista is not the horror that somepeople seem to be. ... people see "oh, it works well" ...
There's a big difference between watching someone sleep on a bed of nails and trying it yourself. Those that try it, all have the same story.
The university where I work just took the step and upgraded 25 computer labs (30 computers each) from XP to Vista.
Public use workstations are the easiest thing to convert, but you still did not see all the pain and suffering that happened there. At my university, there was a big opening at the local library where a big pile of new Macs and other computers were rolled out. The local M$ Ambassadors were told to make a Vista display but were unable to make it work at all. Their continued efforts at the event was the best demo they could have given. All the rest of the systems were working and everyone else was enjoying the party. That's not something you want to have happen in the real world.
The compatibility problems are so bad for real work at companies that 44% of IT is abandoning M$. Those people know what they are doing and are under the gun to make things work. So far, they can't make Vista work and less than 2% have moved and they are almost all tiny businesses without the resources to do better. Only 13% of companies have real full migration planned and those companies are also tiny. If you are not going to see it in the workplace, why torture yourself with it when you could be doing your homework or having fun?
The solution, of course, is not to stick with seven year old software or wait another five years for M$ to sell you something equally bad. Business knows this and more are moving away from M$ than will stick with XP or less. 56% of companies are not moving away and 13% are moving to vista, which leaves 43% on XP or less. But it's worse than that because another 18% are going to make up their mind after testing. Of the options, dumping M$ is the favorite.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Oh well, I should be grateful that there are not more linguists who are also computer programmers, or we'd have more "what I, Larry Wall, see is what you get" Perl style languages.
No one can be so dense as to quote a survey from desktoplinux as a source of anything authoritative regarding IT attitude towards Microsoft products - not to mention the way you quote the numbers so they match your POV (they don't), and your hilarious use of that passe "M$ Windoze" thing.
Slashdot is really going to the dogs lately.