Slashdot Mirror
Vista Makes CNET UK's List of "Worst Consumer Tech"
Several anonymous readers pointed us at CNET UK's Crave blog for a list of what is or was, in their opinion, the worst consumer tech in history. Vista comes in at number 10, in company with Apple's puck mouse (number 6) and Sony's CD rootkit (number 9). According to Crave: "[Vista's] incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list." That's gotta hurt a little, coinciding as it does with Apple's Don't Give Up On Vista attack ad.
I have movies which I ripped myself from DVD's I own. They are in .avi format. I can play them everywhere, on Linux, on Mac, on Windows 2000, Windows XP.
Windows Vista says there's a byte error in the file and refuses to play the movie. This is Windows Media Player, same version as the version on XP.
Vista DRM is a little over-zealous. Or maybe Vista itself just is incapable of playing movies.
No weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men.-Ronald Reagan
True. Many people don't own printers or scanners or sound cards, and so will never notice that half their peripherals are now driverless.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
If you RTFA, you'll notice that the ordering of the items in the list seems arbitrary, and that the authors don't really refer to any sort of ranking within the list.
And yeah.... the puck mouse did suck, but it also wasn't horribly difficult to go out to buy a new mouse if you hated the thing. It was the first apple peripheral, after all, to use a universally standard interface. (Apple really led the pack with USB and Firewire. The PS/2 interface *still* shows up on many PCs! It's a bit sad, however, to see FireWire slowly dying out, as it was undoubtedly the technically superior interface for data transfers)
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Well, considering Vista's "Content Protection" is talked about very specifically by Microsoft itself, including Windows Vista Content Protection - Twenty Questions (and Answers), it would appear that nobody including Microsoft is denying its existence in Vista, or that it goes far beyond what any previous operating system would do with regard to "Content Protection."
Here's a quote specifically from the the link above, which is provided by Microsoft itself:
"Windows Vista includes content protection infrastructure specifically designed to help ensure that protected commercial audiovisual content, such as newly released HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs, can be enjoyed on Windows Vista PCs. In many cases this content has policies associated with its use that must be enforced by playback devices. The policies associated with such content are applicable to all types of devices including Windows Vista PCs, computers running non-Windows operating systems, and standalone consumer electronics devices such as DVD players. If the policies required protections that Windows Vista couldn't support, then the content would not be able to play at all on Windows Vista PCs."
Just because you have yet to run into Vista's DRM or that you don't deal much with A/V content that would cause you to notice limitations when using Vista doesn't mean that it isn't a significant issue for many people. Oh, and if you read the questions Microsoft responded to in the Vista blog you will also notice that Microsoft does admit the DRM will increase CPU resource consumption.
Wired also has an article covering Vista's DRM that specifically addresses criticism of Vista's DRM and Microsoft's response to that criticism. And if you'd like to see what your boss is reading, Forbes also has an article on Vista DRM entitled "Why Vista's DRM Is Bad For You."
Perhaps you should do some research before you post.
We bought my wife a brand new computer with a faster processer, twice the RAM, and Vista rather than XP that it replaced (the laptop had to be replaced because we lost the screen). The Vista computer is SLOW. I'm sure there's a point where you get a fast enough computer to make it not matter, but it makes computers that could fly with XP look like you're trying to run it on a 486.
And I can only assume you've turned off the security prompts if you like the OS. It drives me bananas to click on something, have the computer lock up for a second, redraw the screen shaded, and then pop up with a security warning. Just a warning. No prompt for a password. Nothing. I feel so much more secure for losing that 5 seconds of my life every time I want to look at that control panel.
It's a POS. I'm sure you could make it work as well (or possibly better) than XP, but who has that kind of time? It's broken as shipped. And fixing it makes Linux's foibles seem easy to deal with. I'm a Linux fanboy, but I at least recognize Windows 2000 and XP as being perfectly decent operating systems. Vista is not. I'd prefer to use Windows Me over Vista. It crashes about the same amount and is quicker.