Vista SP1 Release Candidate Available

Microsoft has made available the release candidate for Vista SP1, after a limited beta begun last September. Informationweek points out white papers telling business users that if they were waiting for SP1 to solve application compatibility issues, they needn't bother waiting: SP1 won't solve them, and in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista. Techworld outlines the hoops users will have to jump through to get SP1 installed.

Comments

So...

[Gigiya]

Is it worth installing?

Re:So...

[blake1]

./ should make an article about this guy - "Elusive single Vista user tracked down to this very website".

Re:So...

[ilovecheese]

If you have to ask, the answer is no.

Was WindowsME worth buying? Once again, MS's history repeats itself...

Re:So...

[Uzito]

I haven't noticed any improvements yet. The boot times are painfully slow just as before SP1.

Re:So...

[rrhal]

The Release Candidates are only for those who need to be ready for the service pack on the day it arrives. This lets you test with the prerelease version so you are almost ready when the real thing is released.

Release candidates are often a pain in the butt to uninstall - and they usually need to be uninstalled completely to install the actual released software. I'd wait for the actual RTM SP1 unless you like rebuilding your system.

Re:So...

[Hank Scorpio]

Of course he's single. He's posting on Slashdot. Duh.

Re:So...

[JebusIsLord]

I've noticed that shutting down seems to be more reliable (as an aside, why is this a problem with EVERY SINGLE NEW OS Microsoft releases, for at least the first year? How hard is shutting down???).

File copies are faster (as in, they work properly now. Yay?).

My Hauppauge TV tuner still doesn't work with 4 GB of RAM (x64 edition). I have to set it to 3GB max in msconfig. Hauppauge says this is a vista driver model issue, but clearly it still isn't fixed.

Still slow as molasses.

I bought a Macbook back in the spring, and find myself pretty much only using the Vista box now as a media center server (Media center is still pretty damn cool). I'm usually pretty patient with MS, but Vista is clearly a useless upgrade thus far - I can't even use the 4GB of RAM! Might as well roll back to Media Center 2005.

Re:So...

[macdaddy357]

I don't know. Do you want more DRM crap from Hollywood and the recording racketeers without anything at all in it for you? There are too many things wrong with Vista to fix with a service pack. It is a lemon like ME and Microsoft should have just scrapped it.

Re:So...

[gallwapa]

Shutting down is extremely difficult. As you can see at this link the new shutdown process was quite...lengthy. Meetings, redesigns, oy.

Re:So...

[Thuktun]

Of course he's single. He's posting on Slashdot. Duh. This is an over-generalization. I'm sure some are married and post while his/her spouse is doing something on another computer, or post from work.

Re:So...

[Master of Transhuman]

From the referenced blog:

"In Windows, the node I was working on was 4 levels removed from the root. The periodicity of integration decayed exponentially and unpredictably as you approached the root so it ended up that it took between 1 and 3 months for my code to get to the root node, and some multiple of that for it to reach the other nodes."

Brilliant development model. Now we know why it took five, six years to get Vista out the door in the crappy state it's in.

They should talk to Linus.

Re:So...

[petermgreen]

as an aside, why is this a problem with EVERY SINGLE NEW OS Microsoft releases, for at least the first year? How hard is shutting down???
Hard.

The os has to unload and shut down every driver. Those drivers may be in virtually any state. It only takes one bug in a drivers unload code or in library code that it calls to hang or crash the shutdown.

Hauppauge says this is a vista driver model issue
If a card or bus that doesn't support 64 bit addressing needs to DMA read or write to a location beyond the 4GB mark (due to other stuff in the addres space having 4GB of ram means you have ram at addressed beyong the 4GB mark) windows gets it to DMA to a buffer below the 4GB mark and copies the data at appropriate points.

I suspect hauppage have made incorrect assumptions about how windows DMA works and are getting bitten when windows tries to do this.

Have you tried the card under any other version of windows that supports more than 4GB of physical address space in a machine with 4GB or more of ram? If not then I don't think it is right to blame vista for this.

P.S. I consider it plain negligent to not test a driver for a PC perhipheral on machines with 4GB of ram right through development.

Re:So...

[znerk]

If a card or bus that doesn't support 64 bit addressing needs to DMA read or write to a location beyond the 4GB mark (due to other stuff in the addres space having 4GB of ram means you have ram at addressed beyong the 4GB mark) windows gets it to DMA to a buffer below the 4GB mark and copies the data at appropriate points. Uhm... no.
First off, this isn't even what the parent of your post was talking about. Reading comprehension ftw.

Secondly, Vista has issues addressing the space between 3 and 4GB. 2GB of ram? Ok, everything's fine. Swap your 4 512 sticks for 4 1GB sticks, though, and look out. (Start here when searching for evidence of this).

I suspect hauppage have made incorrect assumptions about how windows DMA works and are getting bitten when windows tries to do this. I suspect Hauppage, like many other peripheral manufacturers, is being "bitten" by incorrect and/or incomplete information coming from Redmond. It's no secret that Microsoft likes to toy with APIs before, during, and after releasing incomplete/incorrect/incoherent specs for an OS interface. If I have to point out evidence of this, you don't know how to use your search engine of choice.

And don't give me that crap about backwards compatibility being the culprit. WINE is tons more backwards compatible than even XP, much less Vista. Stuff written for Windows 3.1 doesn't work on XP, stuff written for Win95 doesn't work on XP, I've got apps that were written for 98 and 2000 that XP freaks when trying to load... Hell, Vista won't even talk TCP/IP networking with XP, much less anything older. It's amazing the tripe being spewed from Redmond these days.

Have you tried the card under any other version of windows that supports more than 4GB of physical address space in a machine with 4GB or more of ram? If not then I don't think it is right to blame vista for this. Why would he attempt to use a TV card in a massive server? There *are* no versions of Windows (other than Vista, and that's still laughable, in my book) that truly support even 4GB of physical memory (nevermind greater than 4GB) except Server 2003, and even that requires the Enterprise or Datacenter versions. Are you actually suggesting he spend an absurd amount of money on the OS for a HTPC? See here for more details.

As an aside, Ubuntu Studio is a good base for a Home Theater PC, as well as having all kinds of whiz-bang editors for video, audio, still images, etc. It requires a DVD for the iso, instead of a CD, but the apps are very pretty. Check out MythTV for an excellent (and indeed, the only) PVR/Media Center app for linux.

--
Disclaimer: I am a Windows(tm) technician, working in a Microsoft-using office. Take my words with whatever size lumps of sodium chloride you'd like to. My employer does not condone, endorse, or even necessarily know about my views and opinions expressed here.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it run Windows?

Re:But...

[richie2000]

In Soviet Russia, Windows runs SP1!

Re:But...

[ultranova]

No, but Linux runs Windows applications.

The question, then, is which has netter application compatibility: Wine or Windows Vista ? In my experience Wine bugs mostly cause slightly corrupted graphics, while Vista causes applications to crash randomly.

Re:But...

[the_fat_kid]

I think that you ment:
"in Soviet Russia, Vista updates you"

Re:But...

[jandrese]

You have much better experiences with Wine than I do then. Usually Wine errors result in the application crashing for me.

Re:But...

[cp.tar]

Yes, but under Wine, applications that crash do so consistently.

Re:But...

[petermgreen]

not so, I play an online text based mmorpg called nightmist, it finally started working under wine fairly recently but occasonally it crashes and worse when it does it has a tendancy to take X with it.

Same Old SP1

[JeremyGNJ]

This will be the same as all the other Service Pack 1's for Microsoft OS's.

It's the mile-marker where the new OS stops feeling "foreign" as the details are refined, and developers have some reason to fully embrace it. Corporate deployments will pick up, as software vendors of TRUE business applications release their "real" Vista products. etc etc etc

It's the same old pattern that has been going on since Windows NT. Business as usual.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Slashidiot]

It would be the same old same old if the SP1 solved the most obvious flaws of the OS. But the thing is this SP will not solve the application compatibility issues, which in my opinion is one of the big reasons why people don't move to Vista. So, not bussiness as usual, but bussiness even worse than usual. Cool.

Re:Same Old SP1

[JeremyGNJ]

That's not true. Sp1 has never solved the glaring flaws of Microsoft OS's. They get solid around SP2 or SP3. But that doesnt stop adoption.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Red15]

So you could state that business is like normal : the downwards quality trend continues.

I can't recall more than 5 problems upgrading from 95 to 98 back in the days (other than the huge system requirements bump - sounds funny now eh :D )

Re:Same Old SP1

[deniable]

Nope, not like NT. NT service packs didn't get good until 2 and behaved like Star Trek movies. IIRC, it was odd ones were OK for 3.51 and even ones were good for 4.0. 4.0 SP3 and 5 weren't bad, they just didn't deliver a lot. Windows 2000 SPs weren't that bad at all.

I like the bit in the article that said that when this thing hits the masses it will reboot your machine three nights in a row to handle the update. So much for long running tasks. I guess it's the visit of service pack past, present and future.

Re:Same Old SP1

[plague3106]

If you read the article (and many other sources) the problems with application compatability are the fault of the vendors which built the software, not MS. Its pretty simple; follow the rules for building software on a given OS, and your application will likely function fine through upgrades. Don't, and you'll have fix your software if you want it running on the newest version.

Re:Same Old SP1

[CambodiaSam]

One qualifier on that: Windows NT SP2 was widely recognized as a complete screw up, even by Microsoft. It essentially made the system highly unstable. However, it was one of the few times that MS actually owned up to their fault on the issue. That's a big reason why they started beta testing packs with end users instead of releasing it into the wild and crossing fingers.

Re:Same Old SP1

[vtcodger]

***can't recall more than 5 problems upgrading from 95 to 98 back in the days***

That's probably because there wasn't that much difference between Win98 and Win95 OSR2. And there were no DRM issues. And the systems were simpler back then.

As I recall the only major issue with Window 98 relative to 95 was mediocre performance (due to IE integration) and that 98 would often hang during shutdown because of what turned out to be about five dozen separate and distinct configuration specific bugs. But those didn't matter all that much.

The procedure for installing Vista SP1 sounds byzantine. I wonder how bad it will be in practice. Is this sort of creeping paralysis from too much complexity (if that's really the problem) going to get worse? Is it going to affect Apple and Linux also eventually as they add capabilities?

Re:Same Old SP1

[bioshake]

Nah - the last OS MS made was actually decent (and was for the end-user and not against them). So no, this is not business as usual.

I think they have already picked out a market for Vista - they just haven't started turning the soil just quite yet.

Re:Same Old SP1

[framauro13]

But the thing is this SP will not solve the application compatibility issues, which in my opinion is one of the big reasons why people don't move to Vista. I've been running Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit since the release candidate was released last year. I've never had any software compatibility issues what-so-ever. The only thing I've ever run into is VPN support on the x64 system, and even then, that's the fault of the company that developed the software, not Microsoft. The x86 version has always been solid. I've ran everything from games to development tools to database servers and java containers. I'm wondering how many people complaining about software compatibility issues have actually used Vista and are reporting these problems first-hand.

And besides, as many people have mentioned, this is a release candidate, not the final revision. The final version will have more fixes / features, and can only help. Once that's out, then feel free to knock it.

Re:Same Old SP1

[MadMidnightBomber]

NT SP4 trashed disk performance, and SP6 killed Lotus Notes[1]. Windows 2000 SP4 killed our domain controllers. Beware of even numbered service packs.

[1] Ok, some would see this as a feature.

Re:Same Old SP1

[morgan_greywolf]

That's not true. XP SP1 solved a glaring flaw in some IDE chipset drivers that caused machines to boot into a BSOD and sometimes even caused massive filesystem corruption.

Re:Same Old SP1

[CambodiaSam]

Heck, "Beware of Service Pack" was my lesson after some sleepless nights. Judging by the general IT reaction to Vista, it seems that everyone is jockeying for the coveted Last On The Block award. For good reason.

Re:Same Old SP1

[morgan_greywolf]

Anecote != data

That is all.

Thank you.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Opportunist]

It does affect Linux, but to a lesser degree. Of course, with added complexity comes added overhead. You have to take more things into consideration. Linux, though, managed to stay mostly modular (read that mostly again before you complain). The system is fairly monolithic by now (and even there you have a good deal of modular design that allows to cut crap you don't want without having too much of its baggage still lingering about), but everything outside the "main" system can be added or subtracted with little to no overhead.

Windows suffers from its antitrust defenses, integrating pretty much everything and its dog into the core to claim that it's impossible to remove it from the system. This runs from IE to media player. Both are so intertwined with the system by now that you simply cannot remove them. This can be a fairly big problem, not only when you don't want to use IE or MP, but also for MS itself when they try to make a transition to a newer system. They have to take IE and MP into account when reworking the kernel. They have to keep it compatible and have to keep old, outdated modules in place because else they would other parts that, IMO, have no business in the kernel.

Linux does of course suffer from more and more complex scripts and tools that have to account for esotheric software, thus they become slower and slower since they have to check whether something one out of a thousand people uses is present, and has to prepare the system accordingly. It is still possible to cut that out, if you're so inclined.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Joe U]

Anecdote (n): a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident
Data (n): factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation
Empirical (adj): originating in or based on observation or experience.

Source: Merriam-Webster

Sorry, what you're looking at is emperical data with a comment. Now if he were telling a story about the time he installed Vista on his computer, that would be an anecdote.

Thank you for calling! Thank you for calling!

Re:Same Old SP1

[Anonymous Coward]

Integration into the OS does not mean integration into the kernel. Neither IE nor WMP are integrated into the Windows kernel. WMP does have drivers to support it, but the code base is not tied to the kernel nor vice versa.

Rather IE and WMP are part of the Windows platform of modules which are reused throughout both the Windows Explorer shell, various supporting application and a wide range of third-party applications. A large number of applications embed and reuse the IE components so that they can offer web browsing functionality without having to write their own web browser.

Removal of these components would cause all such applications to fail. In order to remove them they would have to modify every application they release which depends on them to have some form of fallback functionality, and they could do nothing to mitigate tons of other applications failing.

This form of modularity is good design. It is one used by many opensource projects as well. Without the Konqueror web browser portions of KDE that load that KPart to function, such as the file manager, will fail. Microsoft has made such common dependencies part of the Windows platform which they refer to as the OS.

Re:Same Old SP1

[domatic]

I have one for you then. Vista breaks some (all?) applications based on some (all) versions of Oracle Forms. This was a showstopper in my organization. We won't even consider allowing Vista in here until three years after release or SP2 whichever comes first. Even then, either the OF app or Vista will have to fixed to allow this app to work.

You can work around the problem by installing FireFox and manually copying the JInitiator plugin to the FireFox plugins directory and this is in fact what we advise for home users stuck on Vista.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless it is a pro-Linux anecdote, in which it would be cold hard fact and you would have modded it 'insightful'.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Abreu]

There is no software to sync my Palm PDA in Vista... only a BETA release that's not even recommended for my model.

That one incompatibility was enough for me to avoid Vista.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Tim C]

So... are you agreeing with him (that all the tales of incompatibilities are not hard data) or disagreeing with him (that his tale of compatibility is not hard data)?

Besides, as someone else has already pointed out that's not an anecdote, that's empirical data. "I heard that Vista breaks compatibility with loads of software" is an anecdote. "I installed Vista and had no issues with compatibility" or "I installed Vista and had issues with the following apps..." are not.

Re:Same Old SP1

[framauro13]

Also, just to clarify, by no means am I saying that there aren't compatibility issues, or that those reported are completely unfounded. I know a lot of people who still refuse to use Windows based on their experiences with Windows 95, and still apply the same excuses to more recent versions. They're quick to criticize by just repeating what they read online, when rarely have they ever actually tried the product their criticizing and experienced it first hand.

For what it's worth, I went home for lunch and noticed my mouse wasn't working. I took the Apple mouse off the iMac and plugged into Vista (x86), and it refused to work. So I'll chalk that one up on my compatibility list for Vista 32-bit ;)

Re:Same Old SP1

[Lance Dearnis]

I work in tech support on my college, and have done so throughout the semester. What this basically means, is that people bring in their broken laptops, and I help fix them. This has ranged from the computer-illiterate who can't follow the instructions for getting their computer's security validated and on the network, to "It won't boot up anymore" and even one case where the RAM got unseated and I had to open it up and reseat it. So far? Outside of the very first week, where computer-illiterate people abound walked in to just get on the network, EVERY machine that's come in here is either Vista or plain hardware damage from swinging it around. And I've seen dozens of Vista machines in. They frequently deny their user is an administrator even when they are, corrupt files, crash stuff, quit playing sound, just dozens upon dozen of pain-in-the-ass errors. And I haven't met one person (I've looked) who is happy with Vista on campus, and very few even with the new Office. Vista is just beyond your average user. It doesn't look like, from these posts, that SP1 is going to fix this. And, yes, I realize these are just 'anecdotes' - but the only ones I'm hearing is that Vista stink, and I'm not working in a really closed environment, since I have basically harassed almost every Vista user on campus now (It's only 600 people total in this school, a fraction of which use Vista. It's not too hard.)

Re:Same Old SP1

[COMON$]

How did this get modded funny? The man speaks the truth, of course my theory is that most ./ don't remember NT SP6 let alone SP1. Either a-because they werent in the tech field at the time, or b-were green screen users who could care less.

As I have ranted about on here before, Same thing happened with 2000sp1 all the win98 biggots complained about their legacy devices not working and their games not playing right...booohooo.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Pr0xY]

The problem is that the application compatibility problem is really a double edged sword. Microsoft bit themselves in the ass by pretty much forcing the habit of always running as admin when using windows. This led to programmers doing things like writing to there install dir and using system wide registry keys when a local one is more appropriate.

The real problem is poorly written applications for the most part. The fact the microsoft had to add file system and registry virtualization to vista is just a demonstration of this.

So the question comes...do we make easier to write bad software and install malware as a normal user? or do we tighten up security and break backwards compatibility? In all fairness the answer isn't obvious, because it depends on your needs.

There are other issues as well for compatibility. Unfortunately there is no win-win here. If they make it more compatible, it will be just as much of a security cluster fuck as previous versions.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Tony Hoyle]

I still get techs who have forgotten that what we call SP6 is actually SP6a - the bugfixed version. SP6 was recalled.

Re:Same Old SP1

[misleb]

It would be the same old same old if the SP1 solved the most obvious flaws of the OS. But the thing is this SP will not solve the application compatibility issues, which in my opinion is one of the big reasons why people don't move to Vista.

It is a strange position Microsoft has gotten themselves into. People demand that they support perfectly software that is targeted for a system that is over 12 years old and at the same time users demand that Microsoft make major architectural changes (for security, primarily). If you're IBM, you go with supporting the old systems till the very end (it helps if the system was solid to begin with). If you're Apple, you plod forward with reckless abandon, often leaving user of an OS with a major revision that is only 4 years old in the dust. Both are valid approaches as it depends on on your audience, but you have to pick one, IMO.

I'd like to see Microsoft make a major new architectural change. As in, dump Win32. Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters (ya, I know you can mount filesytems similar to unix, but it isn't the default and seems to have limitations). Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM. Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap. Support old apps only in a sandbox similar to OS X's Classic. Use a "fat" executable/library file format so nobody has to worry about what CPU they happen to be running. Apple, for example, makes going from 32 to 64 bit completely seemless. And even the switch to x86 was mostly painless.

But I'm guessing it won't happen any time soon. Microsoft users will be be stuck with Vista for another 5 years, at least. That is, if they even bother upgrading. A good portion of people will probably still be running XP 5 years from now. I find that strange because, as a OS X and Linux user, running even a 4 year old OS is unthinkable.

Re:Same Old SP1

[bigstrat2003]

I have to question a couple of your ideas here.

Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters... Why? What's wrong with them?

Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM. All command-line shells feel the same (and yes, I've used them on Linux and OS X), I don't know what you expect them to do here.

Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap. TERRIBLE idea. Now, just dumping everything into c:\windows isn't a good idea either, but what we need is to enforce logical folder structure inside that root folder. This is one area where Windows has the right idea: system files should all stem from one root folder, just as long as they're organized well within said folder. Having c:\windows\ { folder1...folderN} makes an order of magnitude more sense than having c:\ {folder1...folderN}. They're all OS files, put them in the same damn root folder.

Re:Same Old SP1

[COMON$]

LOL, ahhh, memories....

Re:Same Old SP1

[hurfy]

"I like the bit in the article that said that when this thing hits the masses it will reboot your machine three nights in a row to handle the update."

That is after the 3 days it takes to download on a slow connection, right?

From article it is 460 MB...damn i miss the days when my computer was 460MB not a patch for one program :( lol, I guess Vista is only for city folk...

Still 115% XP at work thank goodness (3 XP machines still in the box...)

Re:Same Old SP1

[Master of Transhuman]

What part of "biographical incident" in the definition of anecdote didn't you get?

"Anecdotal data" is a common usage. It means bullshit based on one person's experience. Which is exactly what poster was referring to in his defense of Vista.

Try again, grammar Nazi.

Re:Same Old SP1

[misleb]

I have to question a couple of your ideas here.

Completely get rid of DOS concepts like drive letters...
Why? What's wrong with them?

They are unnecessary and problematic. For example, if you have a network drive mapped and plug in a removable drive that wants to use the same drive letter, you have problems. Anyway, maybe it is just personal preference, but I find that drive letters are just too static, arbitrary, and undescriptive. They serve no functional purpose that isn't better solved by volume names and having a single filesystem hierarchy.

Make a new default shell that doesn't look and feel like COMMAND.COM.

All command-line shells feel the same (and yes, I've used them on Linux and OS X), I don't know what you expect them to do here.

Maybe coming from Windows they all look and feel the same. But coming from a background of doing real work through the commandline, there's a world of difference. Dunno what else to tell say.

Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows) that is essentially a dumping ground for so much crap.

TERRIBLE idea. Now, just dumping everything into c:\windows isn't a good idea either, but what we need is to enforce logical folder structure inside that root folder. This is one area where Windows has the right idea: system files should all stem from one root folder, just as long as they're organized well within said folder. Having c:\windows\ { folder1...folderN} makes an order of magnitude more sense than having c:\ {folder1...folderN}. They're all OS files, put them in the same damn root folder.

Ah, but what happens when an application needs to install a shared library or some other plugin type thing? Does that go in the OS folder or somewhere else? How about utilty programs? Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too?

If you ever get a chance, have a look at how OS X is laid out. All folders are accurately named and structured. Theres /System for purely OS related files and other folders such as /Library for in-between type stuff. They're not stuck on using the antiquated 8.3 naming scheme by default that Microsoft in its infinite wisdom still seems to think is approrpiate even though Windows has had long filenames for over a decade. Please. You might be able to apologize for Microsoft in other areas, but logical organization of the system is not one of them. Windows is quite simply a bloody mess. There is nothing they have done right there. They just puked in C:\Windows and C:\Progra~1 and called it an OS.

-matthew

Re:Same Old SP1

[bigstrat2003]

Ah, but what happens when an application needs to install a shared library or some other plugin type thing? Then it goes into Windows\Libraries. Simple.

How about utilty programs? It's not part of the OS, it shouldn't be in the OS folder.

Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too? Well, Microsoft's retardedness about IE being part of the operating system aside, it's not part of the OS, thus it doesn't go in the Windows folder.

Windows is quite simply a bloody mess. No, the fact that there are flaws doesn't make it a bloody mess. At any rate, c:\windows as it stands isn't ideal, but your suggestion that we should abolish it altogether is far less ideal. What we need is to refine the system that's already there (ie, organize things inside c:\windows better), not abolish it.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Joe U]

So, one successful installation and usage report is bullshit and "Anecdotal data" is not data.

How many reports does it take to become valid data and not bullshit?

Re:Same Old SP1

[BlueStraggler]

Since we're getting all pedantic, he *did* tell a story about his experience with Vista, so it *is* an anecdote. And the whole point of the "anecdote != data" meme is that data is plural. One anecdote is a datum, not data. And while it might be an empirical datum, it is still not empirical data, not until he has enough additional anecdotes to measure a trend, calculate the errors, and declare a confidence level. After all, you can fit any curve you like to a single data point - and get a perfect fit, to boot.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I thought the whole point of the "anecdote != data meme" was to sound and act like a prick.

Re:Same Old SP1

[misleb]

Then it goes into Windows\Libraries. Simple.

Really? Don't you think it is important to differentiate between OS libraries and application libraries? I do.

How about utilty programs?

It's not part of the OS, it shouldn't be in the OS folder.

Then why did they ship with the OS?

Hell, what about IE? Microsoft seems to think it is part of the OS. Should that be in C:\Windows too?

Well, Microsoft's retardedness about IE being part of the operating system aside, it's not part of the OS, thus it doesn't go in the Windows folder.

Their retardedness doesn't end there. Browse C:\Windows for a few minutes.

No, the fact that there are flaws doesn't make it a bloody mess

Wow, you should be a politician. So how many flaws == a bloody mess then? When does it become a mess?

At any rate, c:\windows as it stands isn't ideal, but your suggestion that we should abolish it altogether is far less ideal. What we need is to refine the system that's already there (ie, organize things inside c:\windows better), not abolish it.

What system? You mean the system that puts desktop wallpapers directly in C:\Windows? The system that puts temporary files in the same place? I don't 'see much of a system. It is a mess. Have you used Windows so long that you don't even notice it? I'm a slob and even *I* can see that it is a senseless mess of files that needs a complete overhaul.

-matthew

Re:Same Old SP1

[bigstrat2003]

Really? Don't you think it is important to differentiate between OS libraries and application libraries? I do. No, I don't. If it's a library shared between applications, it goes into the big, grand libraries folder, simple as that.

Then why did they ship with the OS? Because they figured it would be useful, presumably. Shipping with the OS doesn't make it part of the OS.

What system? You mean the system that puts desktop wallpapers directly in C:\Windows? The system that puts temporary files in the same place? I don't 'see much of a system. It is a mess. Have you used Windows so long that you don't even notice it? I'm a slob and even *I* can see that it is a senseless mess of files that needs a complete overhaul.

Agreed that it needs to be organized better than it is, but I've NEVER said that it doesn't. I'm saying your suggestion to abolish c:\windows altogether is stupid. The "system" I mean is that everything part of the OS goes in C:\Windows. I think that it needs to be organized better, but C:\Windows still needs to be the root of that hierarchy. It doesn't make any damned sense to not have a common parent folder for OS elements.

Re:Same Old SP1

[ozmanjusri]

all the win98 biggots complained about their legacy devices not working and their games not playing

Out there in the real world, we call those "biggots" customers.

Re:Same Old SP1

[misleb]

Agreed that it needs to be organized better than it is, but I've NEVER said that it doesn't. I'm saying your suggestion to abolish c:\windows altogether is stupid.

I didn't say abolish C:\Windows. I said it needs to have a complete overhaul and many of the files that are in there now should not be in there.

The "system" I mean is that everything part of the OS goes in C:\Windows.

Unfortunately the distinction between the OS and the rest of system is not so clear cut. You're extremely naive if you think it is.

I think that it needs to be organized better, but C:\Windows still needs to be the root of that hierarchy. It doesn't make any damned sense to not have a common parent folder for OS elements.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I am suggesting there not be some common folder for OS related files. The problem lies in determining what exactly what the "OS" is. Some people would go so far as to say that it is just the kernel. Some might say roughly everything that is included on the OS install CD. I think you're making the same mistake that Microsoft did years ago in thinking you can clearly define what is the OS and what isn't.

Re:Same Old SP1

[bigstrat2003]

I didn't say abolish C:\Windows. I said it needs to have a complete overhaul and many of the files that are in there now should not be in there.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I am suggesting there not be some common folder for OS related files.

Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows)... That'd be where I got the idea.

Re:Same Old SP1

[misleb]

I'm not sure where you got the idea that I am suggesting there not be some common folder for OS related files.

Completely restructure the OS files so you don't have a single folder (C:\Windows)...
That'd be where I got the idea.

Then you misunderstood. You'd still have a common folder for core OS related files. In OS X it is /System. But there'd also be other folders for files that are kinda OS and kinda not. You've already agreed that there is a lot in C:\Windows that shouldn't be. Where should they go? All those semi-OS related files that come on a Windows CD that are not the OS "proper" (however you choose to define it) have to go somewhere, don't they? Certainly C:\Programs Files isn't necessarily appropriate for it all.

Re:Same Old SP1

[petermgreen]

Microsoft bit themselves in the ass by pretty much forcing the habit of always running as admin when using windows.
What really happened is that most users used 3.x then 9x. NT was used only for high end workstations and servers. On 3.x there was no concept of user accounts at all afaict and on 9x there was no concept of privilages to anything local.

By the time significant people started moving over to the NT line the idea of all users running without restrictions was too ingrained to go away.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Master of Transhuman]

Read a book on introductory science. Or try one on statistical sampling.

Re:Same Old SP1

[Joe U]

As soon as Slashdot becomes a peer reviewed scientific journal I'll get right on it.

Re:Same Old SP1

[COMON$]

"Customers" are not people who don't repeat buy. The '98 biggots were people who purchased one piece of hardware and cling to it for 10 years out of fear of change. They keep the market from evolving by forcing legacy support. These types of people are leeches on the tech society, profit loss customers, if anything, where supporting them costs 10x the margin earned on product. Those are "Customers" I don't want and never will.

Customers buy when appropriate, upgrade to stay productive and on top, they adapt to new technologies quickly and buy my well created product often.

Seems weird to me

[DeeQ]

"According to Microsoft, when Vista SP1 is offered to users normally through Windows Update, the prerequisite steps will have already taken place automatically over several nights. Microsoft has not set a definitive release date for SP1, other than to promise that it will launch sometime in the first three months of 2008. " So the question I have to this statement is why does it need to reboot the computer now if later it will be able to do the prerequisite steps automatically for the offical release. Why couldn't they impliment that into a RC? Also "The SP1 release candidate will have to be uninstalled before applying the final code in 2008, Microsoft warned as it also issued an odd caution on the subject. "After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1," another support document read." What the heck happens in one hour of waiting? That one really baffels me. However I use vista myself and don't mind the OS but I will not be trying this RC. It scares me to think of the bugs that might come with it. Ill just wait for the Offical Release.

Re:Seems weird to me

[tbuddy23]

What the heck happens in one hour of waiting?

Stomach cramping.

Re:Seems weird to me

[Red15]

Perhaps a more valid answer is that they checksum and register certain key-dll files thru their activation system, to detect tampering.

And having this certain dll file change twice within the hour would probably trigger some sort of alert to "unlicensed activity"

Re:Seems weird to me

[QuickFox]

What the heck happens in one hour of waiting? There is more evil than usual in it, so the exorcism takes longer.

Re:Seems weird to me

[Mateo_LeFou]

If you want a serious answer, I imagine it phones home and tells MS eveything it can about your machine. If you interrupt it, MS maybe thinks you're a pirate, etc. The usual.

Re:Seems weird to me

[Tony Hoyle]

The article is crap... you don't have to go through that at all.

I installed SP1 on top of a clean vista install just the other day.. it works fine (it's a bit wierd though.. it goes through 3 'stages' each requiring a reboot).

Of course I wiped it as soon as I'd done testing - the less Vista I have to endure the better :p

MSDN users can also download a Vista DVD with SP1 already applied.

Re:Seems weird to me

[Anonymous Coward]

Best remark on /. ever. I can't stop laughing.

Re:Seems weird to me

[Scruffy Dan]

I'll wait for the official release and then I'll wait a couple more weeks, just to be sure there aren't any nasty bugs MS forgot to squash.

MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Quite sad actually. Despite all the negative reports about Vista, the new machines will ship with Vista as OEM, usually without compatibility issues or driver issues because the vendors take care of it, the juggernaut will roll inexorably and gain market share.

There will be no change in the situation as long as the business customers take it in their chin and continue to buy MSFT no matter how much abuse they suffer. If the constant acceleration of upgrade treadmill gets interrupted, at least MSFT will retreat from all its loss leading misadventures and allow creativity and innovation to flourish in other areas of computing. Hopefully. The way it goes, PCs are a lost cause for the next five to ten years.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[plague3106]

Um, this may shock you, but there are people that don't feel like they're being abused my MS at all. I'm actually liking their newest products quite a bit; that includes Vista, VS 2005/8, Office 2007 and server 2003, MS Money.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[GregPK]

I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority. The new office is quite good. However, have you tried it on an Apple? There is a reason that 50 percent of Mac buyers are first time Mac owners. Plus, Mac sales have increased double digits for the last 12 quarters. Go long on apple stocks if you wish to increase your fortunes.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[dave420]

Not everyone is mistreated or abused by Microsoft. Many people have a great experience, and many businesses would be greatly harmed if Windows was not an option.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, this may shock you, but there are people that don't feel like they're being abused my MS at all.

You are suffering from Stockholm syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome

MS is attempting to force the entire PC industry into and endless cycle of terrible operating systems & products, holding you hostage with proprietary formats and software lock-in.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Mongoose Disciple]

If you'd said:

I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority on Slashdot

I'd agree with that.

Most people just don't think that hard or care that much about their computers and don't feel like they're being oppressed by Microsoft or anyone else who makes the crap they buy.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Just think. Why do replacement carafe for you coffee make costs 12.99 + shipping and handling and three weeks of wait time, while a new coffee maker costs only 14.99? vendor lock.

Why does the replacement battery for iPod was once priced at 79$? vendor lock.

Have you compared the cost of replacement battery, cable, charger, bulb of anything proprietary with standard compliant versions of the same thing?

There could be a million businesses, happy with MSFT experience, happy with the price MSFT is charging. Still the very same companies would be better off, if they can tell MSFT to go fly a kite when its interests are different from MSFT's interests. Just imagine how MSFT sales force will treat you if you can show them how easily you can switch to Linux and how they will treat you if they know that you are not going to be able to switch to Linux no matter what. It makes business sense to keep your options open, and reduce dependency on any of your vendors. Especially when the vendor is an 800lb gorilla with shady business practices in the past.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Dan Ost]

Maybe I'm being unreasonably optimistic, but it seems to me that Microsoft's market share can only decline.

They've saturated their market and that market is no longer growing like it once was. Vista doesn't offer any perceived value to business users (who resent spending money on their machines just to run the newer OS) and home users, especially gamers, perceive Vista as a step backwards in performance over what they are already running.

Expect to see Apple's market share grow faster than the market. Expect to see increasing awareness of Linux on the desktop. Expect to see XP users resistant to switching to Vista.

Don't expect to see people's perceptions of Vista to improve with SP1. SP1 doesn't address the big complaints and people who care are savvy enough to realize this.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[GregPK]

Point taken, Sorry to say, you are in the minority on UC Campuses where they teach the up and coming business users.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Stradivarius]

many businesses would be greatly harmed if Windows was not an option. That depends on whether the alternative options are comparable or better, and what the switching costs are. Nobody buys their operating system for its own sake. They buy it because they need it to run the applications they want. If every application in the world were available on every operating system, there would be little reason for anyone to use Windows, given the regular infestations of viruses, spyware, etc that plague it and its relatively high cost compared to the alternatives.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a world where operating systems compete on their technical merits. We live in a world where network effects are huge and thus people are largely locked into buying Microsoft because they own the API to which most software is written. You get this chicken-and-egg problem where developers won't develop their apps for other operating systems because not enough people use them, and not enough people use them because the apps aren't there yet. In those areas where this fate was avoided (e.g. server platforms/applications), you can see that while Microsoft still has a strong position, it's not a dominant one.

So yes, if Microsoft and Windows suddenly ceased to exist tomorrow, many businesses would suffer great short-term harm as they would have a bunch of applications that they could no longer run. But that's not because Microsoft is wonderful, it's because network effects lock them into a situation where they have to buy a product that nobody really wants (I have yet to find anyone, even big MS fans, who see any compelling reason to get Vista) yet switching would be even more painful, at least in the short term.

Which I think was the post's point - this situation will persist as long as people/businesses continue to accept long-term suffering to avoid short-term suffering. You don't have to see Microsoft as evil or abusive, or take a dim view of their other software, to see the dilemma people face with Windows.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[pclminion]

Just think. Why do replacement carafe for you coffee make costs 12.99 + shipping and handling and three weeks of wait time, while a new coffee maker costs only 14.99? vendor lock.

And who the hell can blame them? If I had exclusive rights to manufacture something, I'd charge whatever I could get away with. The problem is the artificial restriction on competition which creates this situation in the first place.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason is simple: there's no viable alternative. Please don't give me the Ubuntu crap. Linux on the desktop is a steaming pile of shit.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[plague3106]

I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority.

Bull. If that were true, MS would have gone away a long time ago.

The new office is quite good. However, have you tried it on an Apple?

No, why would I? I hate using Macs.

There is a reason that 50 percent of Mac buyers are first time Mac owners.

Yes, because the market is so small. The question will be, how many will by ANOTHER mac?

Plus, Mac sales have increased double digits for the last 12 quarters.

What a meaningless statement. You give indication of you're talking about a perctange or absolute number.

Go long on apple stocks if you wish to increase your fortunes.

No thanks. Given how the iPhone has bombed, I don't think Apple is infallable.

More people are likely downgrading to XP than buying a Mac.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[plague3106]

*sigh*

No, it couldn't actually be that I am someone who cares about my computer, and don't find the MS products I use to be crap. Noooo..

I develop software for a living. I even game MS the old boot and went to Linux for a bit.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Tony Hoyle]

Maybe I'm being unreasonably optimistic, but it seems to me that Microsoft's market share can only decline.

Their market share will stay the same (roughly) but they won't be able to make profit from it.

Basically everyone is staying with XP.. so they've got lots of market share but it's worth nothing to them - nobody is upgrading. They need to produce something to upgrade to otherwise it's going to cost them.. Windows Server 2008 will probably be the next big one (Vista 'enterprise edition' didn't seem to get any traction).

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[GregPK]

"Bull. If that were true, MS would have gone away a long time ago." They are, very very slowly going away. Mac has achieved 10 percent of the PC market as of this quarter(see NPD). They had a better launch of their latest OS than MSFT did. "No, why would I? I hate using Macs." I'm sorry to hear that. They are often times more stable and have a higher level of user friendliness than the typical Vista machine. Also, bear in mind I worked for MSFT for 5 years out in the field selling this stuff. My recent switch to promoting MAC isn't without merit. No, I'm not working for them either. "Yes, because the market is so small. The question will be, how many will by ANOTHER mac?" More buy another Mac than buy another PC, At the moment at least. There are plenty of reasons to buy a Mac, even for a PC user. The hardware is equivalent to server level hardware on a PC. Which typically costs more than the average MAC when buying a PC. It also has better driver support than the typical branded PC. Because no server level HDWR maker is going to release crappy drivers. "No thanks. Given how the iPhone has bombed, I don't think Apple is infallable." Bombed?? Have you looked at the numbers?? It's pretty much sold more than any other Pocket PC device has to date. More and more Corporate email providers are rushing to support it because their own sales staff demands it... due to it just being simply easier to use and not to mention faster to. I have a HTC-6800 and my buddy an Iphone. Yet, I enjoy surfing the web more on his Iphone than I do my HTC. "More people are likely downgrading to XP than buying a Mac." I told them about this issue within 3 months of them releasing Vista. They need to make an option for consumers because a majority of business users are pretty much flat out refusing to use Vista and many of them are buying XP to overwrite it. As more and more people make the switch to Mac, especially at the university levels where Mac has always made a solid support for students. Another issue that I've repeatedly passed up the chain of feedback.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am not blaming the coffee maker maker or MSFT. I am just pointing it out to MSFT customers who are doing the software equivalent of buying replacement carafes at inflated prices so as to be backward compatible with the existing infrastructure.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[GregPK]

"Bull. If that were true, MS would have gone away a long time ago."

They are, very very slowly going away. Mac has achieved 10 percent of the PC market as of this quarter(see NPD). They had a better launch of their latest OS than MSFT did.

"No, why would I? I hate using Macs."

I'm sorry to hear that. They are often times more stable and have a higher level of user friendliness than the typical Vista machine. Also, bear in mind I worked for MSFT for 5 years out in the field selling this stuff. My recent switch to promoting MAC isn't without merit. No, I'm not working for them either.

"Yes, because the market is so small. The question will be, how many will by ANOTHER mac?"

More buy another Mac than buy another PC, At the moment at least. There are plenty of reasons to buy a Mac, even for a PC user. The hardware is equivalent to server level hardware on a PC. Which typically costs more than the average MAC when buying a PC. It also has better driver support than the typical branded PC. Because no server level HDWR maker is going to release crappy drivers.

"No thanks. Given how the iPhone has bombed, I don't think Apple is infallable."

Bombed?? Have you looked at the numbers?? It's pretty much sold more than any other Pocket PC device has to date. More and more Corporate email providers are rushing to support it because their own sales staff demands it... due to it just being simply easier to use and not to mention faster to. I have a HTC-6800 and my buddy an Iphone. Yet, I enjoy surfing the web more on his Iphone than I do my HTC.

"More people are likely downgrading to XP than buying a Mac."

I told them about this issue within 3 months of them releasing Vista. They need to make an option for consumers because a majority of business users are pretty much flat out refusing to use Vista and many of them are buying XP to overwrite it.

As more and more people make the switch to Mac, especially at the university levels where Mac has always made a solid support for students. Another issue that I've repeatedly passed up the chain of feedback.

Repeat post for formating in plain old text.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[bigstrat2003]

They are often times more stable and have a higher level of user friendliness than the typical Vista machine. Stability is no longer an issue with Windows, and user friendliness is sheer personal opinion. Suffice it to say, I find OS X's user interface to have some pretty idiotic conventions (although it's a huge upgrade from pre-X, which had a UI that was a study in how to write bad UIs). I'm also undoubtedly not the only one, and it's quite probable from the tone of his post that the GP doesn't like the UI in OS X either.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[GregPK]

Ya truth, the only gripe I got with new OSX is that it's slightly harder to organize my desktop in comparison to xp where I have Top line category and sub-menu's for everything to make my life easier. Vista, is a little harder to do because it's always wanting to use the search function. Sometimes I have 6 different programs that basically do the same thing but in different ways and different rates of speed. So I don't always know the exact program I want until I pull up my photo edit folder. Same thing with Videos. Final-cut does everything I want it to do though. Kind of a bonus for Mac. I have a copy of Vista-ultimate and several XP machines around the house. When I get the budget I'm going to incorporate a Mac into the mix. I got a friend who for years was a PC user till he got hired on at Apple. Every chance I get I use his apple over my PC. I had one 10 years ago that I loved. But business apps demanded XP. Thus, I moved. However, with latest versions of Mac able to run windows XP software. It's getting me to lean more that way rather than custom building another PC to spec.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Javagator]

I'm actually liking their newest products

You must be new here. Here is how we do things on Slashdot:

1. Criticize a Microsoft product.
2. Say that people should use Linux/Open Source.
3. ????
4. Karma!

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Anonymous Coward]

In case anyone finds it relevant, plague3106 is a Microsoft astroturfer. A more sophisticated one than notaprguy, but the logs tell all.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[petermgreen]

More buy another Mac than buy another PC, At the moment at least. There are plenty of reasons to buy a Mac, even for a PC user. The hardware is equivalent to server level hardware on a PC.
The pro is certainly built out of server parts but it has a pretty high price tag. Still given an unlimited budget the mac pro would probablly be my PC of choice (apple knows how to deal with the heat problems of FBDIMMS and XEONS in a way that doesn't make a load of noise).

The mini is a laptop with no battery and monitor.

Afaict the macbooks and macbook pros are similar in price and quality to other brands higher grade laptop ranges.

Not sure about the imac but it certainly isn't built out of server parts

P.S. I got a macbook but decided I didn't particularlly like OS-X. It now mainly runs linux (though it also has XP and OS-X on in case I need them)

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[petermgreen]

Basically everyone is staying with XP.
Still most people are running XP on OEM licenses that are tied to the machine. So mostly people who want to stick with XP but get a new machine will either buy it with XP while they still can or buy it with vista buisness and use the downgrade rights.

and some buisnesses and many educational institutions went for subscription based licencing so they have to keep paying.

Afaict microsofts big problem atm is selling upgrades (I count software assurance as essentially an upgrade though there are some other benifits too). While I doubt home users have ever bought many upgrades most buisnesses when they finally migrate will want to upgrade everything at once and since some machines won't have vista licenses they will need to buy upgrades for them.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Dan Ost]

...most buisnesses when they finally migrate will want to upgrade everything at once and since some machines won't have vista licenses they will need to buy upgrades for them

In that case, businesses will hold off until they've gone through a complete upgrade cycle before switching to Vista so that they don't have the additional cost of upgrading machines before they're fully depreciated (3 years?). It's the only way to guarantee that all machines being upgraded are capable of running Vista.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[petermgreen]

how many companies are really on three year replacement cycles nowadays? I know that was the norm back in the dotcom boom but i'm pretty sure it's not anymore.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[Dan Ost]

Companies might not replace machines every three years, but the tax laws haven't changed, so it still takes 3 years to fully depreciate a machine.

Re:MSFT continues to be the King of the Hill.

[znerk]

preview button ftw.

Microsoft problem solution

[QuickFox]

SP1 [...] in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista. Clearly Microsoft is releasing this to solve the problem with Vista being too popular.

Re:Microsoft problem solution

[SEMW]

As a matter of fact, kdawson appears to have made that part of the summary up, since it's flatly contradicted by the actual article (which actually says "all applications that currently run properly on Windows Vista will continue to work on Vista SP1").

SP3

[Corporate Troll]

I'm much more interested in WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5...

Re:SP3

[Anonymous Coward]

Well XP sp3 is in beta as far as I know, but win2k sp5?
Why is this the first I hear of this? I remember them calling sp4 final.

Re:SP3

[Anonymous Coward]

WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5 SP3 is already there. By the road map, it is a first half 2008 release. I think this will probably not be more then a roll-up of updates (for the most part).

SP5 will happen when hell freezes over.

Re:SP3

[jo42]

1) WinXP SP3
2) ???
3) Profit$$$ !!!

Re:SP3

[Fast Thick Pants]

I'm much more interested in WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5...

Win2k SP5 will never happen because MS wants people to think that Win2k is obselete abadonware, even though they've promised to support it until summer of 2010. They refused, for instance, to make a public patch for Win2k's Daylight Saving rules. I doubt they'll even do another post-SP4 patch rollup -- probably just the same trickle of IE6 and DirectX patches we've seen for the last couple of years.

(Of course, you can make your own SP5 and use third party time zone updates. There will probably be a lot of third-party patching as MS continues to drop the ball, pushing the new shiny stuff instead.)

Re:SP3

[Vendetta]

They announced back in 2004 that SP4 was it for 2000. They haven't changed their mind, there will not be a SP5 for Win2k.

Re:SP3

[Tony Hoyle]

If your XP is up to date you basically have SP3 already - it's really just a rollup of patches so far. It's in RC too so should be available publically soon I expect (or just get it from MSDN if you have access to it.. if you work in software you probably do).

Re:SP3

[Klaus_1250]

Nope, not all patches are available through Windows Update. Some (fixing very specific or rare issues) are only available on request and some "just aren't" available through Windows Update (but are though the Knowledge Base / MS Download site). Plus SP3 will add some new minor features and improvements here and there which won't be available for SP2 users.

Re:SP3

[petermgreen]

Win2k SP5 will never happen because MS wants people to think that Win2k is obselete abadonware, even though they've promised to support it until summer of 2010
It is in extended support, they are pretty clear about stating that means that you get security updates for free and have to pay for any other updates.

They refused, for instance, to make a public patch for Win2k's Daylight Saving rules.
The patch is availible you just have to pay for it as for any other new non security win2K hotfix.

Re:SP3

[petermgreen]

or just get it from MSDN if you have access to it.. if you work in software you probably do
Last I checked it didn't seem to be availible on MSDN subscriber downloads.

Re:SP3

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you ruin this MS rantfest. You're right, of course.

The GP whines about Microsoft's "promise" to support their nearly 8-year-old operating system for another two and a half years, yet fails to mention the meaning of "extended support".

It's a Release Candidate

[WED Fan]

Is it worth installing?

Are you planning on installing it on a production machine?

Are you planning on installing it on your home machine?

The answer is: Don't!. But, if you do, don't come complaining that it broke your system and that's why MS sucks. It's a release candidate.

Are you planning on installing it on a test system and documenting any issues to see how things go so you can plan on how the install will go when it is in RTM?

O.k., go ahead, that's what a release candidate is for. Especially if you plan on providing the feedback on major issues.

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

Now, if you install the RC on your test system, provide feedback on you major error, and then the RTM has the same problem, you can complain.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Mongoose Disciple]

Why would anyone bother installing beta software before writing giant posts criticizing it and proclaiming the imminent death of Microsoft, when it's so much easier to farm mod points by cutting out the installing step? Heh.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[PolyDwarf]

Meh... My company nominated me to be the Vista guinea pig, to test whether the software we produce was compatible with Vista, and to make changes if it wasn't. Given that I didn't have a choice in the matter (Other than to quit... And quitting over that seems a bit dumb), I've got every right to complain.

Vista's shell sucks. I hate it with the burning rage that could only otherwise be produced by 35 angry chihuahuas.

Luckily, geoshell works on it, so I don't have to put up with it.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, now you're not actually testing Vista's shell for your company, are you?

As for angry chihuahuas, are there any other kind?

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Opportunist]

I don't need to drop a hammer on my toe to know that it hurts. It's (un)common sense.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

As for angry chihuahuas, are there any other kind? Yes, there are the amorous ones trying to hump your ankle.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Luke Dawson]

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

Sorry, gunna have to disagree with you there. A release candidate is just that - a candidate for release. Just because Microsoft has warped the term to mean "late beta", doesn't mean that's what it is. In many cases a release candidate becomes the final release.

RC's aren't meant to have major errors. RC's are designed to be feature-complete and stable. If a release candidate has major bugs, then it isn't release quality and thus should never have been labeled as such in the first place.

Note: I'm not condoning putting RC's on mission-critical equipment, but I fundamentally disagree that an RC should be inherently considered unstable.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Cro Magnon]

I have confidence in Microsoft. I'm sure their RC is just as good as the final version will be.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[pclminion]

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

What the hell are you talking about? What exactly is the point of a release candidate or beta if not to elicit feedback from users? Do you think they are sending this shit out just to be NICE? They want to know what's broken, and I'm sure as hell gonna tell them what's broken.

I guess according to you we should bend over while thanking Microsoft for their broken shit?

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[HalAtWork]

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

What about those who are trying to install the release candidate in order to get a working system out of the software that they had installed previously, which was supposed to be a good experience but wasn't? This is typically why you have people asking "Should I install the beta patch?" on just about any amount of software, unless you're talking about overclockers that want beta firmwares/BIOS/drivers that supposedly eek out marginal performance gains. Don't immediately think someone installing a beta or release candidate of critical software is some kind of dumbass. Users want to know other users' experiences, especially regarding improvements on outstanding bugs.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Tim C]

He's clearly not talking about providing MS with feedback when he says that, he's talking about bitching about the experience here and on other forums. Hence his very next sentence:

Now, if you install the RC on your test system, provide feedback on you major error, and then the RTM has the same problem, you can complain.

He's saying sure, install the RC and provide feedback to MS - but don't install the RC then bitch pointlessly on the web without at least also telling MS directly.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Tony Hoyle]

Anyone who installs "beta", "community technology preview", or "release candidate" or "Windows Vista" software on their systems and then complains about the experience and how it sucks should be branded with a big ol' "D U M B A S S" on their short-bus-riding-tuckus.

There, fixed it for you.

btw. The RC of Vista SP1 is *way* more stable than the Vista release. It still has some silly unfixed bugs (like the dropdown on the file open dialog box still lists the browser history instead of the file open history) but I've not been able to break it even stressing it... network file copy still seems a bit flaky but even that is better (instead of crashing explorer completely it recovers after a minute now). Not to mention the amount of prompting seems to be a lot less.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[daffmeister]

I fundamentally disagree that an RC should be inherently considered unstable.

Not inherently unstable but potentially unstable.

That's the candidate part of release candidate. There might still be things to fix, but there might not.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad day Twitter? You seem rather upset, did a windows machine require a reboot after an update?

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Master of Transhuman]

I have confidence their alpha - for the last release - is as good as their final product of the current release will be.

In other words, run the alpha of XP - it'll be as good as Vista.

People are joking. Microsoft doesn't release finals - they release alphas, then rely on updates and service packs and guinea pigs paying them for the privilege to fix their crap.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[smorken]

My parent's chihuahua lunges at your face, when you are sitting with him on your lap, and tries to stick his tongue in your nose, or ears if you turn my head to avoid it. Pretty funny dog.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

XKCD!

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[aqk]

Hmmnn...
If we're ever there together, remind me to turn your head.

Re:It's a Release Candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod me troll, but why the fuck do people use Linux then?

Patience

[Horatio_Hellpop]

Just wait until March. BFD.

Also.. XP SP3 RC1

[SD-Arcadia]

AnandTech says an RC of XP SP3 is also released. http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=9987 Although I don't understand why "download directly from microsoft" on that page links to http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Microsoft_Windows_XP_Service_Pack_3/1197391546/1

Re:Also.. XP SP3 RC1

[Zebra1024]

Information on RC1 of XP SP3 can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsxp/0a5b9b10-17e3-40d9-8d3c-0077c953a761.aspx Looks like you currently have to be a Technet/MSDN Subscribers to get it.

Re:Also.. XP SP3 RC1

[Hanners1979]

You can actually grab it directly from Microsoft here too:

http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload/update/v3-19990518/cabpool/windowsxp-kb936929-sp3-x86-enu_a2ca583dedcd86837796111a632efa29a23f4cc0.exe

Business users of Vista ?

[supersnail]

" Informationweek advices business users ".

How badly informed is this magazine? The Fortune 500 companies (probably the fortune 5,000,000 companies) wont touch Vista with a bargepole. They have spent millions of man hours writing testing and deploying thousands of apps Windows XP.

Does Information week think they are going to risk this investment by deploying evferything on an untested operating System after upgrading/replacing millions of working XP PCs with "Vista unready" hardware.

Windows NT was a common site on business desktops until about 2005 a full five years after Win2K became available and three years after XP was released. This comparitively rapid deployement of XP only happened because it was largely a rebranding of NT plus some eye candy. Vista is drasticly different from XP and no sensible IT department will touch it until at least SP2 is available and the current set of desktop hardware needs replacing anyway.

Re:Business users of Vista ?

[JeremyGNJ]

You miss the fact that fortune 500 companies usually either lease their hardware, or budget for a full hardware refresh every 3 years. That's just how business works.

Re:Business users of Vista ?

[Dan Ost]

When we get new machines, the machines come with a corporate image already loaded. Our current corporate image is XP, not Vista. If a machine comes with Vista, it'll get wiped and replaced with the corporate image.

This is in a Fortune 100 company. I expect that this is typical of the other Fortune 100 companies.

Out of curiosity, anyone know what Microsoft's corporate image looks like? Specifically, is it XP or Vista based?

Re:Business users of Vista ?

[default luser]

You miss the fact that fortune 500 companies usually either lease their hardware, or budget for a full hardware refresh every 3 years. That's just how business works.

Yes, and these same Fortune 500 companies also lag behind in terms of OS rollouts, because it's easy for them to get volume licenses and use whatever WORKS. Just because they lease machines doesn't mean they have to upgrade OSes whenever they upgrade the hardware. They typically build their own custom images with fully-automated installers, because with that many employees the effort is worthwhile.

My Fortune 500 company started their XP rollout just this year. I'm actually still using Windows 2000 on my desktop, because the rollout hasn't reached me yet.

Re:Business users of Vista ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont be silly! they all use macosx

Re:Business users of Vista ?

[supersnail]

Troll -- another first for me!

Total Cost Ownership study needs updating

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The biggest challenge, according to independent software vendors and Microsoft, is getting apps to work with Vista's advanced security features, such as the User Account Control. It's designed to prevent desktop users from making changes to their system images without approval from an IT administrator. The feature operates at the kernel level and can affect the way third-party applications, including antivirus software, work.

Oh yeah, sure. MSFT dissed Linux with the Total Cost of Ownership BS. The cost of migrating applications to Linux was what had boosted the cost for Linux column. Now will Gartner re run the Total Cost of Ownership studies including the cost of migrating "XP to Vista"?

Re:Total Cost Ownership study needs updating

[rkanodia]

Gartner's raison d'être is to promote Microsoft and proprietary software in general, regardless of the real advantages and disadvantages. Bill Gates could start shipping big boxes full of venomous snakes, and Gartner would have an article explaining how black mambas and hooded cobras add significant shareholder value, especially when compared to Ubuntu, which only ships with Python and not an actual python.

If it's too much of a hassle

[techpawn]

I'm not going to install it for people. It's the entire reason I'm still running XP on my box. Just too much of a hassle and I see no reason to spend the time and take the aspirin just to be in line with Microsoft's latest wishes. Then again, wasn't it an install of Active Directory that didn't let you really do anything useful till SP1 and then you could actually see the value of it?

Re:If it's too much of a hassle

[CXI]

This story has a lot of FUD. This is not the official release, it's still the Beta testing. When it goes full release it'll be a simple Windows Update.

That's gonna hurt...

[Penguinisto]

I'm thinking that folks Out There(tm) are going to start realizing that you simply cannot make a flawed architecture run any better by adding more duct tape to it.

I'm actually not trolling, but if anything, stating the obvious. Windows NT's setup was a good-enough architecture back when "the company LAN" was just a bunch of computers strung together on a hub or in a ring. The Internet changed that, and just as it almost left Microsoft behind back in 1995 at the apps level, it's almost about to leave them behind right now at the OS level. It's becoming apparent that the thing simply cannot keep up with what's required.

If SP1 actually improved speed and performance, as well as add a better legacy/compatibility mode, they might have been able to eke by without people (outside of /. and the Mac community) questioning it.

Not anymore.

I think we're going to start seeing the decline of Microsoft. It won't crash overnight, but I suspect that, barring a miracle on their part, things will only start falling from here for them. Between Macs at home and Linux at the server room, MSFT's market share loss will be slow at first, then start accelerating. It'll take about a decade, but by then Microsoft's OS will be about as popular as Amiga's was in 1998-2000 (roughly), but will perhaps a larger base of holdouts, depending on developer mindshare and markets.

I've never really said that (at least and meant it) before... now it's moved from being a personal guesstimation to becoming my professional opinion.

Glad I went full *nix a long time ago...

/P

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot "Netrcraft confirms it."

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Glad I went full *nix a long time ago...

Why are you glad ? If your prediction is right, you took the pain too early, too much.
It's like "gasoline is too pricy today and new diesel engines are good, glad I went diesel in 1965". It's stupid. The right time to change from gasoline to diesel was 5 years ago and switching early is much worse.

So, by your prediction, the right time to change from Windows to unix is still in the future.

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[Junta]

are going to start realizing that you simply cannot make a flawed architecture run any better by adding more duct tape to it. I dunno, some of the 'problems' described sound like maybe, to some extent, MS was attempting to go beyond duct tape with respect to their atrocious security situation, where if you have an account on a system, you can alter entirely too much about it. The problem with doing that is applications that designed themselves with that (and they hit the same sort of breakage in a coarser way when people were moved from the 9x architecture to XP, for certain account setups, which is why to this day most users give up on running a normal account without administrator priveleges). When XP rolled out, many developers were in the habit of writing things saved by the user to it's 'program files' directory.

Now it sounds that they are accustomed to having a program run by the user manipulate things at a higher level directly, and that somehow Vista disallows that, ostensibly to mitigate the risk of the very malware anti-virus targets. One wonders whether the best long-term idea for the end-user is for Vista to relax their default security policies, or for companies to handle privilege escalation in a more secure fashion. *nix programs have dealt with this situation since inception, and haven't had to fundamentally revisit program designs in order to accomodate any radical security overhaul attempts. In recent history, things like AppArmor and SELinux have *certainly* caused a lot of grief to admininstrators trying to use it for the first time, but both are about allowing common applications to do *precisely* what they are expected to, and everything that they are expected to without redesign, but nothing more. Occasionally while tweaking such policies, developers realize a boneheaded security move they made and tweak it in an update. Quite frequently, administrators have to put more work in to setting the contexts correctly on, for example, files for a web server to serve, or directories for webapps to write to. But the fact remains, the *nix world security enhancements have always been able to perfectly allow 'legacy' applications to work just fine, because the model was never fundamentally broken.

Of course, it does little to change the default resource consumption/perception that inhibits Vista adoption. However, above all, the biggest gate to Vista adoption is no one sees the point of shelling out money when it isn't going to let them do anything new compared to Vista. If Microsoft follows through on the threat of decreased support of XP in favor of Vista without making the transition seamless, they risk pushing customers to alternative platforms. I wouldn't underestimate microsoft, and they always have the XP product that is thoroughly entrenched. They had ME and the consumer world ran 98SE until XP came out. Now they have Vista, and maybe they'll make it successful, or maybe they'll bring to XP the 'goodies' they were trying to bring people to Vista with (i.e. DirectX 10), and stall for another attempt. For the most part, the *common* person's reasons for not going to Vista are the exact same reasons they wouldn't jump platforms, except maybe milder (applications may not run, unfamiliar environment, what they have today suits them fine). I can't imagine any remotely reasonable set of company leadership officially ditching XP until they have absolute confidence that Vista has been successfully adopted, regardless of what roadmaps declare today.

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[Penguinisto]

>> Glad I went full *nix a long time ago...

Why are you glad ? If your prediction is right, you took the pain too early, too much.

On the home front, maybe - but at work? Not necessarily... compare the typical MCSE salary with the typical *nix admin salary. (I do quite well in that comparison, IMHO).

By the time world+dog starts scrambling for *nix admins (it's already begun), I'll be (well, I pretty much already am) in the right position to take maximum advantage of it.

Come to think of it... even on the home front, OSX is BSD *nix under-the-hood, and I've been able to make it do some really cool things that most Mac users don't even know about. I mean, for instance: how often can you rightfully claim full NFS connectivity in a home network, obviating the need for the (slower) Windows sharing, or big hard disks jammed into every computer? And that's only the tip of a really big and geek-colored iceberg. :)

/P

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[pclminion]

I'm thinking that folks Out There(tm) are going to start realizing that you simply cannot make a flawed architecture run any better by adding more duct tape to it.

Maybe not duct tape, but I've had a lot of success with JB-Weld.

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[Penguinisto]

I agree with what you've written to almost perfectly... and it reinforces what I'd written originally. My thanks for the insight that you've added to the whole deal, because it provides a lot of reasons as to why.

Perhaps "duct tape" was a bit unsuitable as a term, as you have rightfully pointed out that they really did modify a lot of what the internals do. Problem is, this has resulted in huge costs in MSFT's equivalents of both userland and kernelspace (forgot offhand which terms they use, but they do make the same rough distinctions between user and system spaces). I mentioned that these changes cost Vista in terms of efficiency and runtime cycles. You have aptly pointed out why it's costing so much, and I thank you.

I do disagree a bit with one part. You mentioned that a lot of it has to do with how app writers have written their software... without getting too messy with details, I disagree a bit because 'C:\Program Files' should have been ceded to the 3rd-party app writers by Microsoft a long time ago, and they could have been fine by retreating to \Windows without losing much. But, that's not the only reason programs are busted in Vista, and the app writers are/were only trying to adapt to the environment they were in. While a lot of apps are obviously bone-headed in structure and execution, one cannot expect discipline from them if the environment they're in has none either.

I think MSFT tried to have it both ways in Vista - they wanted to enforce some sort of app-level distinction for security reasons, but at the same time wanted to accommodate existing apps. Thing is, you can't have it both ways and hope to have it remain secure. A/V products were the biggest PITA when it came to this... The likes of Symantec and McAfee were screaming for blood when they discovered that (at first) Vista wasn't going to let them get any hooks in at Ring0... like they were used to getting for at least a decade now. Then MSFT stupidly relented and let them in anyway, trying to pull off a balancing act that resulted in a bigger mess than if they simply told the two corps to bugger off, or leave it open for world+dog through a few select APIs. That's just one public example among probably hundreds, if not thousands of compromises they made, each one cutting efficiency and usability by just that much more.

IMHO, Apple did it right - they left a sandboxed emulation ("Classic") mode for legacy apps, and told everyone flat-out that with OSX, 'Homey don't play dat' - and relented very little (I think Carbon was pretty much the only concession they made out of that). I think that's what someone else in here was thinking of when they wrote about running VirtualPC as part of Vista.

To be fair, MSFT doesn't have the same luxuries Apple had because they knew that, say, Adobe or other large app makers (individually or as a whole) would simply say that they're going OSX from now on... and app support is pretty much the only technical merit Windows has left (albeit a slowly eroding one). It would be mitigated somewhat by Windows' market penetration, but home and business purchasing cycles aren't exactly in Microsoft's favor anymore. It only gets messy from there. (Apple had the same risks, if not greater, and the move to OSX was a ballsy one on their part... but they were better able to pull it off because of their support for the transition, how they sold 'Classic', and they showed how any speed differences under Classic would be negligible at most. I don't think MSFT could pull that off as easily).

They've had a year to clean things up a bit, tweak down the cruft, add a workable legacy emulation mode for pre-Vista apps (they have one already still lounging about for the old 16-bit apps FFS), and in general do what Apple was forced to do between OSX 10.0 and 10.1 - crash-program the bugs and fix the uglier messes.

But all in all, it still boils down to bad architecture, and bad execution of same, which I can safely assume we both agree on.

SELinux and AppArmor are good point

Re:That's gonna hurt...

[atamido]

Our experience with Vista includes the issues with the (thankfully) basic correcting of security design, but also goes way beyond that. Forcing the writers of programs to realize that all users are not running as local administrators is a good thing, and I understand there are going to be growing pains with that, but there is so much more wrong with Vista that I was hoping SP1 would fix.

Network issues are the biggest. For instance, they completely broke the way that a user selects what wireless network to use. It used to be fairly intuitive, and now nobody understands, AND there aren't any added benefits (although a few options seem to be missing).

I was trying to change a particular network setting in Vista once, and I could not find it anywhere. After enough time, I decided to google it, and saw the solution (which many others had apparently searched for). You had to open this one particular window and press the ALT key, opened up an extra menu with the option I needed. There was absolutely nothing in the window to indicate some random keypress would show more options.

On a network share there is a folder with 10 pictures, all with the same owner and NTFS permissions and all taken by the same camera. The user on the Vista machine cannot open 4 of them, but other users can just fine.

Accessing the Vista machine through explorer using \\computer\c$\, some folders return an access denied. There doesn't seem to be any reasoning behind which folders can and can't be accessed, and permissions don't seem to make a difference.

There are others, but you get the idea. Yes, the security changes broke stuff, but there are a lot of other things that have been broken for no apparent reason.

Service pack saves you money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it worth installing?

Well, it's at least $150 less than one of Apple's service packs, so at least that's something.

Re:Service pack saves you money...

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple only charges for major (major minor?) releases. Get thee to a nunnery, troll.

Re:Service pack saves you money...

[jellomizer]

They use different versionion methods...
Moving from Major number in Mac OS is like the following in windows

Windows 3.1 - 95 OS 8 to OS 9
Windows 95 - XP OS 9 to OS 10

The Major Number changes in OS X represends really major changes to the OS Fundementals.

The Minor 10.1, 10.2... 10.5 Are actually new major versions with Many New Features and changes.

The 10.5.0 - 10.5.1... are like SP 1 and SP 2... Mostly fixes to the code and minor changes and a feature or two added every once in a while.

Different company have different devleopment cycles, and benchmarks. Comparing OS X to Vista in Value is like comparing growth speeds of a Tree and a bean sprout.

Who'd have thought

[eneville]

RC really stands for Recovery Chair...

Step 1...

[denmarkw00t]

Microsoft rushes Vista out to market.

Step 2. Rush out Service Pack and fumble over yourself trying to fix bugs you knew about before plus the slew of new ones that came after release

Step 3. ???

Step 4. Profit

How do they do it?

Re:Step 1...

[Nullav]

I wouldn't call the dev team playing Duke Nukem Forever for six years 'rushing it out to market'.

Re:Step 1...

[denmarkw00t]

Touche, but playing Duke Nukem Forever doesn't solve issues that they had time to fix but didn't, probably because they were high and playing too much Duke Nukem. Regardless, given the time they had to work on Vista, I would have expected a slightly better experience when it came out. Playing games doesn't constitute working and releasing a critically acclaimed disaster that could have been avoided doesn't constitute any surprise from me that SP1 is fumbling too.

Kudos to MS for trying to make the user experience better, shame on them for not getting it right the first time(s).

Thank God for small mercies!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The upside, according to Microsoft, is that all applications that currently run properly on Windows Vista will continue to work on Vista SP1.

What the heck is going on here? That applications wont break is an upside? Wasn't the biggest selling point of MSFT has been the compatibility with the existing installed base?

This is a telling moment for all the CIOs and IT managers of corporations. The biggest reason why most companies could not migrate to a competing platform (or at least platform-agnostic technologies) was because they were locked into this proprietary system and it simply costs money to remove all the hacks and remove dependencies. Now they can't dodge the cost. It is inevitable. Given that, does it make sense to pay so much to get locked into another proprietary vendor locked system again? They were fooled once into vendor lock or vendor lock crept up on them unsuspected. But now?

The MSFT strategy is clear. They must make the cost of migrating from XP to Vista will be marginally smaller than migrating from XP to platform-neutral-technology. If the IT managers fall for this trap once more they will exactly be in the same situation five years from now.

The key is open standards. We don't have to bicker among ourselves the merits and demerits of open source vs closed source, or free software with paid software or whatever. Open Standards will level the playing field. That is all we should ask for. Let us duke it out in a level field and may the better philosophy win.

Re:Thank God for small mercies!

[RAMMS EIN]

I completely agree with your post, but I must add that I am surprised about something. You wrote:

``Wasn't the biggest selling point of MSFT has been the compatibility with the existing installed base?''

You're only now noticing that Microsoft doesn't provide backward compatibility anymore? Ever since people got their hands on Vista, the complaint has been that X (that worked in previous versions) no longer worked. Where X is a lot of software, but especially hardware. At some point, I was sure more devices and win32 programs work under Linux/AMD64 than Vista/AMD64.

Also, Microsoft introduced changed, severely changed user interfaces to a large portion of their desktop software. IE7, MS Office, Windows itself, Outlook, ... The transition to the open-source lookalike is much smoother than to the new, Vista-era version from Microsoft.

Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[xirtam_work]

One of the biggest reasons people and companies are not upgrading to Vista is backwards compatibility. Microsoft have a free product called Virtual PC that anyone can download. They should include a suitable version of XP with very Vista license and include Virtual PC in the standard install. If you can run all your mission critical apps in a compatibility layer like this (think 'Classic' on the old PPC Macs) then they could really move forward with Vista and make it a modern OS and drop the old cruft they've been carrying for years in the name of backwards compatibility. If they wanted to they could even include Win95/Win98/WintNT or even Win3.1 virtual environments.

If Parallels and VMware can make the desktop sharing between Mac OS X and Windows easy, why can't Microsoft make it easy between Win9X/NT/XP and Vista easy?

Problem is no one at Microsoft in interested in doing this. I was invited to Microsoft's London offices last month and suggested it to a few of their top engineers and sales/marketing people and no one wanted to admit that Vista was a relative failure. You can downgrade to XP but you need your own DVD/CD media, and can't run Vista and XP at the same time, it's one licence or the other. Madness!

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[Penguinisto]

Re: VirtualPC: So, err... why should I , as a business user, have to run a Windows emulation suite inside of Windows just to get my app running, when I can eschew that and simply run the older OS on bare metal (suitably walled-in security-wise, of course)? Alternately, I cna just whomp out a VM and run that if it's on the server (though that'll depend on how Microsoft's latest server iteration does when that comes out).

FWIW, Windows does have legacy modules already in place for 16-bit apps (WoW, I believe it's called), and could have just as easily made something similar to run NT/Win2k/XP apps atop Vista (and better still, 32-bit apps inside a 64-bit environment), all without anyone noticing it.

Problem is no one at Microsoft in interested in doing this.

Bingo - MSFT would rather you spend the dough. Welcome to the upgrade treadmill.

/P

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[wattrlz]

...If Parallels and VMware can make the desktop sharing between Mac OS X and Windows easy, why can't Microsoft make it easy between Win9X/NT/XP and Vista easy? Because they don't want to. It's so much more profitable to just force people to buy more licenses.

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[MMC Monster]

Re: VirtualPC: So, err... why should I , as a business user, have to run a Windows emulation suite inside of Windows just to get my app running, when I can eschew that and simply run the older OS on bare metal (suitably walled-in security-wise, of course)? Sandboxing. It's not a big deal if the administrator knows what he is doing, but in all those small offices where end users have internet access, it has it's uses.

I had a secretary come up to me the other day with a trojan that was written as if it came from the federal government, with an attached .zip file containing a .doc.src file. Fortunately her computer was running Win98 and doesn't have an unzip application installed. Otherwise the whole network would have been infected.

(It wasn't until a few days later that the virus scanner updates cought up with it and labeled it as a trojan.)

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[Shados]

and better still, 32-bit apps inside a 64-bit environment

Did I miss something? thats already how it works... virtually all 32 bit apps work in 64 bit, except for things like drivers (understandably so).

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[Penguinisto]

Sandboxing. It's not a big deal if the administrator knows what he is doing, but in all those small offices where end users have internet access, it has it's uses.

I know that and you know that, but the beancounters and the CxO crowd aren't going to see the justification as easily, esp. when their answer is going to be "well just keep using XP and firewall the thing" (or some similarly spine-shivering reply). However, the crux of what I was pointing at involves response phrases that are somewhat more intelligent, like: "well why not just re-work the [Custom] app? If we're gonna take a performance hit anyway, we may as well port it or re-write it. This time let's use one of those operating systems that won't stick us in this situation five years from now." I know, I know - while I'm dreaming I'd like a pony; but more and more, CxO types are starting to figure this out, and even though most of them would have a hard time telling you what the acronym "GPL" stands for, they do know the phrase "Open Source" very well...

This bodes not well for MSFT, and if their big answer is "well run this virtual environment here, and...", then they're gonna get bit, hard, because suddenly they're going to have to compete with running the thing in VMWare under Linux, Parallels under OSX Server, or what-have-you.

/P

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[QuantumRiff]

I don't want to sound like a fanboy for apple (I don't own a mac) but isn't this what apple has done 3 times now? Once, when they switched from Motorola to PowerPC chips (so your programs could run, but slower) once when they released OSX (so your version 9 apps could run in "classic mode" though slower) and one last time when the moved to Intel chips ?? Built into the OS.. a compatibility mode that is slower, but functional..

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[secPM_MS]

Actually, I do do this. I have installed XP into a VPC and I use it to run apps that won't install in or run in Vista. I don't have many of them. I use DosBox to handle the old DOS exe's that are not well supported in VPC.

The software vendor community got lazy in the early days - run as administrator and everything just works. Install stuff across the system, including replacing system dll's and modifying the Local Machine Registry settings. Of course, while you are making your app work, you have the potential of slamming everything else, including the system.

So with Vista, Microsoft has shipped its first client OS that actually will let users run well as normal users - without admin privledges. But the software assumes admin privledges. Hence the app compat hit. There was a lot of work done with deflection directories and deflection registry hives to allow ill-behaved software to think that it was modifying the system, but it doesn't catch everything. This app compat hit was unavoidable, as not only was legacy SW broken, but new software was still being written that assumed admin privledges on the point of the user.

I run my family members as normal users on Vista boxes. I am writing this as a normal user on my notebook which is running Server 08. It works. It was painful to run as a normal user on XP. You couldn't do it on 95/98/ME.

How many users on BSD or *nix boxes have their users running as root?

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[SuperMog2002]

I think the trick would be for Microsoft to include a Windows XP VM, but make it seamless with Vista. The end user never hears the words virtual machine. They never fiddle with virtual disks, memory management, device attachment, or any of that. In fact, they never interact directly with XP at all. Instead, there's simply a stripped down sandboxed XP instance sitting idle in the background, and when the user runs a non-Vista compiled application, Vista turns control of that app over to XP. All the UI controls (at least, those using standard Windows classes) are still rendered by Vista, but the actual meat of the application is running on the XP kernel, and thus will usually run as if you were running it on a native XP install. This would simply be an option on the Vista install disk and not require a separate XP license or install.

Re:Biggest reason for not upgrading to Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

Madness?!

This! Is! Vistaaa!!!!!

(dear lameness filter: yes, all those caps were like yelling. because this is supposed to be like yelling.)

RC?

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA: "Not everything planned for the final version of SP1 has made it into the release candidate"

So much for a release candidate...

Oddest warning

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The SP1 release candidate will have to be uninstalled before applying the final code in 2008, Microsoft warned as it also issued an odd caution on the subject. "After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1," another support document read.

I have heard phone support script humanoid robots demand that I turn off the modem and router and wait for 30 seconds before switching them on. Kind of made sense, something like make sure all capacitors are fully discharged and the machines are really truly off.

In India there is a popular belief that if an AirConditioner is turned off one must wait for three minutes before turning it on. One technician hand waved about the compressor might be at some odd point in the cycle and suddenly making it run would "break" the shaft. Did not believe him. But in the last trip I find that all the A/C are connected to the grid through "voltage stabilizers" that have a delay timer to prevent the machine from being turned on too soon!

Now MSFT takes the cake! Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why? The pagefile is still thinking SP1 is running? The MSFT DRM software has to call in and tell Redmond that SP1 has been really uninstalled and get a confirmation back? Or uninstalled bits of SP1 is considered to be an radioactive waste and they must be beamed to Jupiter to be buried?

Re:Oddest warning

[gid]

God if I would have given up Debian years ago if I had to uninstall every beta or prerelease package I installed from sid. Why in God's name I don't give up Vista is beyond me. Oh... I know... games. And wine just isn't quite there yet.

Re:Oddest warning

[slackmaster2000]

"Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why?"

To calm down, that's why. Attempting to perform too many consecutive installations of Microsoft software, without proper breaks, has been linked to the recent upsurge in general anxiety disorder.

Re:Oddest warning

[slackmaster2000]

Ok ok, one more...I can't help it.

"Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! Why?"

Because it requires a reboot!!

Re:Oddest warning

[Locklin]

Any condenser/evaporator based refrigeration system (air conditioner, refrigerator, freezer) should not be turned off and on in quick succession. A running compressor has significant back pressure because it is pumping against the pressure gradient. It not designed to *start* with this gradient already in place. After a few minutes the pressure between high and low sides balance, and it can start as usual.

Re:Oddest warning

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Thanks, so looks like that technician was right, and this engineer is wrong. Not the first time this happened. Thanks for the info.

Re:Oddest warning

[noidentity]

In India there is a popular belief that if an AirConditioner is turned off one must wait for three minutes before turning it on. One technician hand waved about the compressor might be at some odd point in the cycle and suddenly making it run would "break" the shaft. Did not believe him. But in the last trip I find that all the A/C are connected to the grid through "voltage stabilizers" that have a delay timer to prevent the machine from being turned on too soon!

From a page about condensers:

A brown-out time delay protects the compressor in two ways. If the voltage drops and the motors draw too much current(amperes) it shuts the contactor off. If the control voltage is interrupted momentarily, it shuts the contactor off. When the compressor is running, high pressure exists at the exhaust port. If it is shut down and restarted before the pressure equalizes with the intake port, the motor will not be able to overpower the pressure imbalance and overheat. The time delay will stall the restart for three or four minutes; sufficient time for the pressures to equalize.

Maybe there is a legitimate purpose for this delay after uninstalling SP1? My best guess would be their Genuine disAdvantage thing is suspicious of closely-spaced registration events or something.

Re:Oddest warning

[daenris]

I just take this for granted and was surprised to see someone complaining about it possibly being untrue. It's less of an issue with newer air conditioners because they -- at least the ones I've used -- have a built in safety that won't turn the compressor on again right away to prevent this. But on many older air conditioners, if you turn it off while the compressor is running and then turn it right back on it will trip whatever breaker it's on (or surge protector if you're using one). And now you know... and knowing is half the battle... or something.

Re:Oddest warning

[Anonymous Coward]

You misunderstand, it's just like every other windows (and to varying extents all major OSs), if you make a sizable system change you have to reboot. Apparently M$ just has their own nomenclature: "wait at least one hour" in place of "reboot". Though, having played with vista I can honestly say that M$ should file a patent on "optimistic support documents".

Re:Oddest warning

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called dual booting.

Re:Oddest warning

[daivzhavue]

As a former desktop support monkey, this is the excuse to give the caller that you'd love to stay on the line with them, but since it takes an hour, it'd be unfair to make other callers wait. Then once he's off the line, you can be on break/at lunch/busy so some other Help Desk monkey has to take the follow up call when everything is now broken.

What? You thought we actually had you run defrag to help your computer. No, no, no. That was just to get you off the line...silly user...

Re:Oddest warning

[SL Baur]

Wait for one hour after uninstalling software! When the time comes, packet sniff everything coming out of the box and watch everything that's running. If I cared, which I don't, I'd bet you that you will see nothing at all.

A one hour delay sounds like propagation time through a distributed data base. So all that it probably is waiting for is whatever implements Microsoft Windows registration to fully recognize that the machine in question is legal to switch to Microsoft Vista SP1. I.e. it's perfectly normal and there's nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Oddest warning

[Anonymous Coward]

The Air Conditioner/Refrigerator story holds true here in America, too. Like all electric motors, the compressor has a hard time generating torque at low RPMs. The incremental workload of pressurizing a neutral high pressure circuit from zero to full gives the motor some opportunity to spin up. In a too-soon startup, the high amperage of being stuck in a stall will quickly heat up the motor, which is already warm from the last run, and unable to be cooled by the internal fan. If there's condensed compressor liquid in the high side, you could also be near a full hydraulic lock (more a problem if the system has been tipped over recently, but still).

The whole system will be saved by a self-resetting thermal fuse in the motor, but do you really want to push your system just one failure away from meltdown? It's fair enough to give a few minutes for the high-side pressure to bleed back to the low side, let the motor cool off, and be two whole Acts-Of-God away from starting a fire.

Re:Oddest warning

[Niggle]

"After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1"

They might be relying on checking timestamps on certain files. Windows time-stamping is a bit odd and it can take a hour for changes to be noticed by the file system.

Try this (NTFS volumes on windows XP, but probably works elsewhere):
1) Create a new file.
2) Check the timestamps on it.
3) Delete the file.
4) Create a new file with the same name in the same directory.
5) Check the timestamps on it.

You'll probably find that the creation date of the second file is the same as the creation date for the first one. Copying one file over the top of another also keeps the creation timestamp of the replaced file, but the modification timestamp of the new one.

If you insert a 1 hour gap (or a reboot) between 4 and 5 you should get the right result.

Re:Oddest warning

[Lefty2446]

It's the done thing that you let a capillary metering device system equalise pressures to reduce startup currents. Units from most manufacturers will have delay timers in the 3 - 7 min range.

Adrian

Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[kuactet]

Dear reader, I have a confession to make: I love Microsoft. I love it more than I love my family. This ought not come as a surprise to any that know me: a long line of jaded ex girlfriends will laugh bitterly and recall the passion they could never share in, and those few that can call themselves my friends accept that, on Patch Tuesday, their lives are nothing to me.

But above even my love for Bill Gates' corporate loin product is my love for my work. It is a sacred task that has been assigned to me, and I dare not let friends, nor family, nor even software allegiances stand in the way of the fairness and impartiality that is my trademark.

But why do I tell you this? Why do I bare my soul in such a vulgar fashion? It is that you may understand: even now, I will not let my love blind me; I do not write from the perspective of an enamored lover, nor a too-faithful user. No, it is as a Genuine Microsoft User hungry for the Next Best Thing that I pen this, my review of Windows Vista.

Part I: Making the Switch

"Aha," you are saying, having been inundated by countless negative reviews, "He will surely realize that Vista is in every way a downgrade from previous Microsoft products; he will slowly become disillusioned with its clunkiness, bloat, and arbitrary changes made only for the sake of justifying an overzealous Vice President's salary. Over the course of many painful pages, he will finally renounce his love for the Monopolist, and end with an impassioned plea for the adoption of the obviously superior Apple OSX while a swelling orchestral piece rises in the background."

Alas, no. Such a review, while undoubtedly entertaining, would be as far from the truth as, say, religion. No, this is most assuredly a glowingly positive testimonial: Windows Vista is easily the best operating system on the market today. Such an assertion, I realize, may offend some of my readers' base sensibilities; if that is the case, kindly allow me to show you to the exit.

But I have, once again, gotten ahead of myself. Firstly, why I choose to review the Vistas now, rather than immediately following the January launch, bears explaining.

It was a cloudy Monday morning, some two months back, when my erstwhile laptop, a venerable old Compaq, gave up the ghost. The screen, which had been flaky for a number of weeks, finally quit altogether.

After a brief mourning period, I began scouring the print classifieds, searching for a replacement. I soon found one, a dual-core offering from Hewlett Packard. The $600 price tag--considerably less than my weekly escort--made its purchase, and my subsequent review, a foregone conclusion. It arrived the following Thursday, in the hands of a perky blonde UPS driver; I christened it Alex, turned it on, transferred my data (a breeze thanks to Microsoft's new Streaming Automatic External Backup Restore technology), configured it to suit my needs, and resumed my work.

I have been using it, very happily, ever since and, today, shall pass judgment.

Part II: New Features (and what they mean for you)

Aero:

This brand new DirectX-based desktop rendering engine was the focus of Microsoft's Vista promotional materials. It is easy to see why: Vista with Aero is stunning; it puts, in this writer's humble opinion, all other human achievements to shame.

I have been to the Louvre; I have seen the works of the masters, of Monet and Michaelangelo. My heart swelled, and I nearly wept at the sight. But the feeling I get when I gaze at Aero... even that cannot compare. It is more than my simple words can express. My screenshots are but pale reflections of its splendor.

You must experience it yourself: study the subtle interplay between light and shadow, feel the cool ephemer

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[GregPK]

Dude, share the drugs... Even when I worked for Microsoft selling Vista I didn't push that hard. Yea, I would've sold about double the product off the bat. However, My reasons why... -I would've pissed off customers and lost thier trust. -I would have pissed of stores -I wouldn't have sold as much Office. -I wouldn't have sold as much Windows XP -Would have decreased overall Microsoft Sales Even the sales I did make came back to the store screaming about Vista breaking this or that. Do you know what it's like dealing with hysterical customers? Do you? For every great feature Visa brings, it ads 3 other counter-intuitive ones.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[symbolset]

Very nice. Well done!

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

>I have been to the Louvre; I have seen the works of the masters, of Monet and Michaelangelo.

Dude, you're a bit off. All of the Monet paintings are in the Musée d'Orsay on the other side of the river. While there are a couple of Michelangelo sculptures and a few drawings in the Louvre, If you want to see Michelangelo Buonarroti's work, you need to go to Italy, Rome and Florence.

For my money, the most impressive sculptures in the Louvre are the Winged Bulls of Sargon II.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[yakumo.unr]

How is that any different to when XP was released, other than they've had a few more years to get rooted into their old OS's ways?

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo! As the first poster to actually read the entire thing, I must congratulate you. A magnificent performance, which has produced all the clueless responses you could hope for.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[Weedlekin]

This excellently written piece of satire obviously went right over the heads of quite a few Slashdotters, who seem have trouble understanding anything more complex or subtle than "m$ sux, ballmer throze charze and darnsis lyk a munki, lol, linux roolz".

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[UID30]

Security:

Vista has it. I spewed coke on my monitor...

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[myvirtualid]

This excellently written piece of satire obviously went right over the heads of quite a few Slashdotters

Methinks twas the length. It wasn't until the last paragraph that I began LOL, nay ROFL, after having a supercilious smirk pasted on my smug mug, wondering whither the writer was going.

Could this be serious? I asked myself. Surely not! I answered, more from desperate disbelief that the Rogue of Redmond could do something well, let along right. But this seems so earnest, so serious in phrase if not intent.... Surely not.... And yet....

And then I stumbled upon bloated assware that isn't worthy of the fifteen cockslapping gigabytes of hard disk it requires and that he should switch to Linux and verily, the coffee burst forth from my nasal passages and spattered my screen even as my diaphragm did heave and cramp.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[MooseMuffin]

This is easily the best post I've ever seen, on /. or anywhere else.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[kuactet]

And that was the biggest flaw you saw? That's, uh... good! No, you're right, that's the only thing wrong with it.

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[GaryPatterson]

That is the best post I've ever seen today.

Thanks kuactet!

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[Eighty7]

the man porn was a bit much though...

Re:Is it too late to talk about Vista?

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

No, I was going for the flawed statement that wasn't blindingly obvious to everyone. Wingshooting a pretentious art analogy is more sporting than ground sluicing an obvious MS astroturf.

Prereqs still require reboot.

[splutty]

So the question I have to this statement is why does it need to reboot the computer now if later it will be able to do the prerequisite steps automatically for the offical release. Why couldn't they impliment that into a RC?

During those 'nights' the updates that are being made will still require you to reboot. Only now you just reboot it 3 times in a month, instead of 3 times in succession.

Will still be able to slipstream it or will need..

[Joe The Dragon]

Will still be able to slipstream it or will need to add that prerequisite by hand to the install disk?

Hoops? What hoops?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

Techworld outlines the hoops users will have to jump through to get SP1 installed. OK, this is just getting to be sad. Slashdot can't announce anything about a Microsoft product without resorting to needless hyperbole.

Here are the "hoops" you have to "jump through" to install SP1:

1. Download the RC1 package.
2. Execute the .CMD file.
3. Done!

Vista will automatically download all updates you need to install the RC1 and install them over the next couple of days (unless you have automatic updates turned off, of course). If you're impatient like me, you can manually kick off Windows Update and install everything with a couple of reboots.

So, speaking as someone that's compiled their own Linux kernel and most of my apps from source more than a few times, the above is no "hoop" at all. Slashdot again goes out of its way to make things seem worse than they are. It's a Release Candidate for crying out loud! I never see this level of scrutiny and criticism directed at any Linux-related software, be it free, open, or commercial.

Re:Will still be able to slipstream it or will nee

[Tony Hoyle]

Already done... just download from MSDN pre-slipstreamed.

I suspect the usual slipstream methods work if you want to do it by hand.

Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[mcolom]

I've been using Linux from the beginning of my IT career, that was 12 years ago. At that time ppl were installing mainly slakware 3.0 with the mythic 1.2.13 kernel.

I remember when I setup a local ISP with 128 kbits of bandwidth and 300 email users using just one server, with kernel 2.0.0, with a motherboard sporting a chipset Triton and a whopping 128 MBytes of RAM.

Later I went to a medium size company where I ended as the IT manager. Through the years we migrated all our Sun servers to Suse Linux. Right now this company online sales system is based on linux, and things are going great.

I consider myself a linux expert after all these years using different versions of linux kernels and setting up an IT infrastructure which is mission crytical and moves more than 2000 million dollars. I've been a great linux supporter, and I'm still very proficient managing it.

But as succesful as a server system linux has been, at the desktop the community has failed miserably to produce a simple consistent desktop solution to reach the masses. KDE and gnome should have merged years ago and psch together. X should have been abandoned for a new and more efficient graphics system, years ago too. Anyone remmeber the GGI project? That one offered hope for some time, then failed. We were in need of a Linus Torvald leading a common desktop effort. It did not happen

In the meantime, the windows server system has become much more stable. In the late 90s linux was incredibly more stable than windows. Now the difference is very narrow, and you can already run a mission crytical business on linux, without much an effort.

To make things worse, .NET is a development platform which is very well designed, easy to use and cheap (compared to the Java/Oracle combo), so you can expect .NET gaining market share at great speed.

You can check it if you want at www.netcraft.com. Never the difference in market share between apache and IIS was so slim.

Very dangerous too for the OOS movement is also the fact that all the managers seem to think now that OOS will be the solution to their company and IT problems. Those who saw the .dot rise and fall will understand me.

So I'm just beginning to invest heavily my spare time in learning .NET and windows server management, as I think that we'll see in the next years lots of company migrating their linux systems to windows.

Re:Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, a 12-year linux expert who has no history on /., cannot
spell "slackware" and is impressed by the stabilty and
effectiveness of MS "techologies". Hey Mr OBVIOUS SHILL, fuck
off back to Redmond.

Re:Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[RightSaidFred99]

Oooh, yeah, I'm sure he's a "shill". Actually, I tend to call everyone who disagrees with me on _anything_ a shill, just like you. My grandma and I got into an argument about Ron Paul, I claimed he wanted out of Iraq, she said we should stay. I called her a fucking George Bush shill and donkey punched her.

Re:Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[tuffy]

If a single, consistent GUI was important, we'd all be using Macs.

It's not.

A specific, "must-have" desktop application that only runs on Linux would drive desktop adoption. But since open-source developers tend to make their applications portable, and portability leads to Windows versions, it's difficult to point to an application one must have Linux for.

But as the desktop gets increasingly less relevant, I expect Linux to become increasingly important due to that same portability. Perhaps one day Windows will match it, but not anytime soon.

Re:Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to admit, he almost got me. Even at the first "OOS", I thought, "Oh, he just mis-typed OSS." Then the second "OOS" comes up and I just stopped reading and got the Haitian to wipe his post from my memory.

Re:Only Apple will threaten MSFT

[pandrijeczko]

Very dangerous too for the OOS movement is also the fact that all the managers seem to think now that OOS will be the solution to their company and IT problems. Those who saw the .dot rise and fall will understand me.

For your information, it's "OSS" not "OOS". And if you knew ***ANYTHING*** about Open Source Software, you would understand that the operating system is pretty much irrelevant - OpenOffice, The GIMP, Mozilla Firefox and many other applications are OSS that can run on Windows just as they do on Linux.

To be honest, you don't sound like someone with 12 years' Linux experience - are you sure you weren't just gluing together the disk boxes at the Red Hat Linux packing factory or something?

Five starts to you too!

[RoverDaddy]

Alas if only I had mod points today...

Cue pointy-haired boss

[Opportunist]

In this case, we'll stick with Windows. A distorted appearance is inacceptable. Imagine a client comes in and sees that our computers are unable to display the software, imagine the message this gives him!

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[Tony Hoyle]

Vista will automatically download all updates you need to install the RC1 and install them over the next couple of days

s/days/minutes/

The update runs in 3 stages, with a reboot after each. One of those stages will be downloading and applying updates.

There is absolutely no difference applying this and applying any other service pack, other than it reboots 3 times rather than once.

Just the other day I installed the bare vista and SP1 right after each other with no delay, special handling or anything else.

Obligatory

[Archangel Michael]

Never Mind

Wow

[Tom]

From what it sounds like, they actually managed to make a fundamentally broken product even more broken!

Can we still nominate them for the Engineering Award of 2007? Making Vista any worse is not exactly a small feat.

64 bit XP

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm much more interested in WinXP SP3 or Win2k SP5...

Just go with SP2 for XP64 for x86.. you'll be happier. Seriously, the win2k3 based kernel in that thing is fabulous, and I've been running everything from compilers to first person shooters without a problem. Just be sure that there are 64 bit drivers available for your hardware.

And before anybody ask "why" as opposed to XP 32bit: XP64 has been more stable for me as well as smoother, along with none of the Vista bullshit. I wish they'd take the "XP" moniker off of it and just call it "Windows Workstation Professional".

Betas for pathes

[misleb]

Am I the one one who finds it amusing that we have betas and release candidates for service packs? And then we often get patches to fix service packs after they finally do release it.

Future tech support calls:

Tech: "What version are you running?"

User "Lemme check. Looks like version '2007 SP1b Build 3567 Patch Level 3'"

Tech: "Sir, you should be at version 2007 SP1b Build 3768 Patch Level 2"

User: "Wait, is that newer or older than what I have now?"

Tech: "It is a newer build of an older patch. You can download it from our web site, but if you do install it, you will not be able to install older builds of newer patches."

User: "Uh, OK?"

Tech: "You may also want to try running the beta version 2008 which I hear from our dev tech is just awesome after you apply all the prerelease sub patches."

User: "Uh..."

Re:Betas for pathes

[misleb]

Err, that should have been "Am I the only one.."

Warning: Breaks Activation

[neveragain4181]

I put SP1 on a spare laptop here, and one unexpected thing is that it puts an unremovable watermark on the desktop of 'Windows Vista (TM). Evaluation copy. Build 6001', i.e. the same you get when you haven't purchased or running the demo. Jeez.

This isn't a production machine so I don't greatly care, but I do feel I'm being punished just for trying it out - i.e. I paid $400 for an O/S, go put a SP1 on and now look as if I've pirated it... Thanks guys...

N/A

Re:Warning: Breaks Activation

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a way to remove it.

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/12/10/patched-user32dllmui-to-remove-evaluation-copy-text-on-desktop-of-vista-sp1-rc1/

My Microsoft

[Doc Ruby]

If I were handed Microsoft in, say, 2003, I wouldn't have wasted time making Vista. I would have just written a beefed up version of Wine from scratch (to evade the GPL) to fully work. Then packaged it in a Xen-type virtualization layer that could also run multiple instances of either Linux or "Linux Windows", and just made sure all the apps run perfectly in the Windows GUI (not in the Linux GUI - remember, I'm the new Evil Microsoft CEO ;). I'd make something like GNOME or KDE, but that looks like Windows, again evading the GPL to own the IP. I'd touch the GPL kernel only when it needed to be patched to work properly within my otherwise proprietary OS.

Then I'd bundle in all the crap that makes Windows work well with all kinds of other products. Proprietary drivers, bundled 3rd party apps.

And it would all work, it would use all the Linux development (and developers) to sell Windows. It would keep everyone's desktop looking like Windows. And it would actually work, because it would be running on Linux, which is much more reliable than Windows (which gets unmanageably complex under the hood copying all Linux's features).

Re:My Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

hahahahahahahahahahhahahahahhaha

Yeah, like that would have a higher probability of working well with current apps/drivers than starting from the Windows Server 2003 code did.

Thanks, I needed that.

Jump through hoops?

[smoothdogg00]

Whoever says that you need to jump through hoops to install this is full of s@$#. It's a pretty simple process, just doing a couple updates through the automatic update system. Don't listen to these Linux/Mac fanboys.

Vista Update and Hosed my Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic but relevant to the POS called Vista and the POS company that makes it.

So last night Vista downloads updates, installs and restarts my machine. Completely hosing my Eclipse environment. Now I have to spend half a day to figure out all my settings and redo them.

Thanks MS, you POS. You are all POS. I hope a friggen volcano erupts underneath your campus.

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[stewbacca]

Well it isn't hyperbole when you do your three steps, then you get to the "Vista will automatically download all updates you need" part, something goes awry like it always seems to with MS products, leaving your system in limbo right in the middle of some random install. Bring in the hoops, start jumpin'.

Open standards

[huckamania]

Open standards are great, but I don't think it will be a panacea for all that ills us on the intertubes. Given any reasonably complex standard, you will find enough wiggle room to make item A not work right on application B. If A is > 50% of the market, it's going to be A's way or the highway.

I think we are going to have to rely on our own intelligence and less on the latest buzzword which promises to level the field.

So what does Vista SP1 do exactly?

[jbeaupre]

For one answer, lets look at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/bb972745.aspx
Next to nothing there. No surprise. They talk about updates offering improvements, then say SP1 is another mechanism. Meaning not the same as the updates? Recent reports say performance and compatibility aren't part of the mix, so we can hope it's reliability. Oh yeah, and hardware. Ok, they address customer feedback, but they don't say they made improvements, just addressed them. "Yes, I understand your pain. But we're a monopoly so too bad" is addressing a problem.

49.7

[rajafarian]

***can't recall more than 5 problems upgrading from 95 to 98 back in the days***

Speaking of Windows 95, or is Windows 9x? Do you know what's a real good way to get me ROTFLMAO???? Check this out: Try 49.7

Winders would crash, JUST SITTING THERE. ha hahahahahahahahahah Is that effing funny or what?

Re:49.7

[petermgreen]

yeah MS didn't know how to use thier own gettickcount function properly. When using that function you have to be aware that on machines of long uptime it WILL rollover.

Of course on 9x most people didn't notice it because it was very unusual for a 9x system to keep running that long without crashing for some other reason. Look like there were some bugs related to it on the NT line but none quite as serious.

It's probably DRM-related

[Animats]

Maybe there is a legitimate purpose for this delay after uninstalling SP1? My best guess would be their Genuine disAdvantage thing is suspicious of closely-spaced registration events or something.

Probably something like that. Maybe you have to wait for propagation between Microsoft's servers as they track the state of your client. If you reconnect too soon, the server you happen to reach may not yet know the new state of your machine.

Oh, and remember that RC2 expires in June 2008. So you're installing a self-destruct on your system, and gambling that Microsoft will have a working final version out by then.

Ubuntu 7.10 (instead of Vista)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ubuntu 7.10

No need to thank me. Pay it forward, friend.

Still holds true...

[BUL2294]

[...] and in fact might cause applications to break that were running under Vista [...]

It's not a bug, it's a feature!

As Miracle Max said...

[Ardeaem]

"After you uninstall Service Pack for Windows (KB936330), we recommend that you wait at least one hour before you try to install the final release of Windows Vista SP1," As Miracle Max said, "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."

The threat of hoop jumping is really lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, if you are running Vista RTM then you need to update your system before you install SP1. Vista RTM was released a year ago. If you have not updated since then, Vista must have really wonderful security features. On the other hand, if you have not bothered to update so far, why bother with SP1.

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

something goes awry like it always seems to with MS products, leaving your system in limbo right in the middle of some random install. Bring in the hoops, start jumpin'. I see. And you have proof that this is happening widespread to anything remotely close to resembling a majority of the RC1 users? Or are you just making stuff up because you got sour on Microsoft back with Windows 95? News flash, bub: Windows isn't the "bad old Windows" you used to get. It's not perfect, but it's light years better than whatever yardstick you seem to be applying to it.

Have you even downloaded it and tried it? I put the RC1 on about six machines yesterday (two laptops, three Dell desktops, and one of my own personal machines at home) and all of them implemented the RC1 exactly the same. No stumbles, no hangs, no "leaving [my] system in limbo right in the middle of some random install."

Quit making stuff up to suit some predetermined conclusion you came up with years ago. If you can't speak from experience (note: saying you have experience also means admitting to having and using Vista, so be careful what you say) then you're obviously speaking from ignorance. I have no time for fools.

Re:stale mate?

[pandrijeczko]

And lastly... many here praise on Linux. Yeah its free and it has some legacy from UNIX (the holygrail of modern OS). But for the well built enterprise one (which I use in large PABX servers).. still not for free!

I am a senior telecoms security consultant for a company who's core product is a Linux-based PABX, running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux actually.

And you are correct - in the case of the telephone servers, we install a licensed copy of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on the servers because, in the case of OS problems, we need to rely upon Red Hat for support to issue appropriately tested RPM updates. However, the cost of that license is factored into the cost of the server which is currently treated as an appliance - the customer has no need to touch the Linux OS as all updates are applied through our own software updates.

But what you are paying for here is the support from Red Hat, not for Linux itself. Ultimately, just about all of the software in Red Hat Linux (or any commercial Linux) is available freely on its own or within the myriad of other free Linux distros out there.

In other words, you, sir, are talking UTTER BOLLOCKS!

I did similar

[goldcd]

I've got a VMWare XP instance on my home machine, for the situations where Vista is being difficult.

In all fairness (which I know isn't popular round here) Vista is pretty good - only thing I need VMWare for are when I want to use my old Canon scanner or for the odd exotic thing that doesn't have any Vista drivers.

I think the problem vista has is that it doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't before. Yes the GUI looks nicer, but apart from that there's nothing obviously better - look carefully and there's loads of stuff, but that doesn't help address the casual 'why should I upgrade?' comment.

MS have made it even worse by adding 'fake' improvements - for example switching off DX10 modes in games purely as they're not running on Vista (which makes them look very silly when little tweaks turn them back on in XP).

Anyway, installed SP1 RC1 last night, it's a bit faster.. not quite sure what else to say, or what else I was expecting *shrugs*

Linux continues to be the King of the "/." Hill.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most people just don't think that hard or care that much about their computers and don't feel like they're being oppressed by Microsoft or anyone else who makes the crap they buy."

Apparently insightful isn't worth what it use to. I finally got Linux working after a week out of commission. Yes Windows was having issues as well, but then that means there's no difference in the level of "crap" I can get from either one.

Why to be glad...

[Junta]

Why of course, so you can post a comment on slashdot saying "told you so", duh.

But more seriously (as a almost pure user of *nix architected systems now), he never said that the transition will be made any less painful as time passes, or that it's necessarily that painful to be on Linux now despite the market situation of Microsoft. Depending on your usage patterns, running a Linux platform may not be painful at all right now. Specifically, apart from the commercial game scene, most home usage is well served by a modern Linux distribution now. Whatever pain there is to be endured in the future, he endured that pain already, and his experience probably lacks pain today. Meanwhile, (also speaking as someone forced to use Windows on occasion), the Windows experience can be painful once familiar with the power and flexibility a Linux distro can provide, depending on the type of user you are. So you can be glad to be away from the whole mess and be an observer for those who endure it. *Particularly* if his prediction is right and the market moves to a non-MS solution, you know it will only because the market is painfully forced too, and microsoft users would suffer the most by not being prepared for such a switch. Not saying his prediction is accurate, but that's the implication that would be the case were it true.

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[RAMMS EIN]

LOL. At least, I hope you weren't serious...

``Here are the "hoops" you have to "jump through" to install SP1:

1. Download the RC1 package.
2. Execute the .CMD file.
3. Done!''

Ok, fair enough. But then:

``Vista will automatically download all updates you need to install the RC1 and install them over the next couple of days (unless you have automatic updates turned off, of course). If you're impatient like me, you can manually kick off Windows Update and install everything with a couple of reboots.''

In other words, you download, you run the .cmd file...and then the process STARTS!

Then you "install everything with a couple of reboots", and that's your hoops for you right there.

For me, it's just "apt-get dist-upgrade".

ya, vista failed, ug

[icepick72]

If I see another comment about "vista failure" I'm going to stream. AARRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.. There's one down the page. No wonder world history repeats itself because even does the tech community over several short years. Can't wait until I start seeing "windows 7 failure" and "I downgraded to my Vista because it's more stable". I think what we have here is a case of a number of younger people (younger than me) who aren't experienced enough yet to recognize this yet. I mean "failure" means something is already irrevocably done obviously Windows Vista is not and never will be. Microsoft's efforts are being focused on Vista and they're the same people who brought us XP that many people love (but complained about initially for similar reasons).

Submission accepted?

[Devistater]

Odd, it says my submission for this story was accepted, but it doesn't mention my name in the summary. Of course, the editors did rewrite my submission, and it looks better this way. My original submission was a bit awkwardly phrased with quotes. Probably a bit dry.
But I still like my headline better, it was "MS says Vista compatibility not solved in SP1" :)

Re:Submission accepted?

[pyat]

Maybe yours will get to be the dupe.
Check back tomorrow :-)

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[Devistater]

Don't forget the part where MS tells you that you will have to uninstall the RC of SP1, and "wait an hour" before then installing the SP1 release when it comes out next year.

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

In other words, you download, you run the .cmd file...and then the process STARTS! \

So, I guess when I do a make && make install under Linux, I'm "jumping through hoops" in exactly the same manner, right? After all, I download an "installation script" for some program off the web, I "run" the file...and then the process starts! Also, I'll bring up that there's more than a few Linux programs these days that allow you to download and install short install script that does nothing more than download and install the full executable from some web-based distribution site. How in any way is this different than what's being described in the RC1 install docs?

Furthermore, your "apt-get dist-upgrade" is great, but it requires you to reboot in order to take advantage of certain things such as an upgraded kernel. Since SP1 modifies the Windows kernel, it's in the exact same class as a Linux kernel patch, and most (if not all) of those require restarting the OS in order to make the changes take effect. I'll also point out that you're running an updater/installer tool (apt-get) that is functionally identical to Windows Update, so you run the command...and then the process STARTS! That fizzling sound you hear is the air leaking out of your argument.

And since when is rebooting "jumping through a hoop"? If that's something you consider difficult, you're a pathetic example of a computer user.

Bah, why am I wasting my time? You can't see reason or logic, you're too interested in being a software zealot. As I said in an earlier post, you're a fool and I have no time in my day for fools.

It's people like you that give Linux a bad name.

Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone gotten wine to run publisher? Running 2003 version of publisher works until I load an old .pub file. I have a few people with old .pub files and want to use their existing copies of 2003 office under wine. the rest work fine (even outlook connected to the exchange server). Needed to install the extra fonts for the 2007 office outlook messages. Publisher is the only issue. Open an old .pub file and publisher crashes. These files were created with publisher 98. I don't know if that matters. Some reason wine doesn't like publisher 98. It crashes the install. Off topic I know so much for any +karma I had. I have not gotten any response other then it will not work on other forms either.

Re:Wine

[moranar]

Anonymous Cowards have no karma, so bitching about it is pointless and perhaps damaging. As to your problem, why comment it here instead of talking to WINE developers?

Because you aren't supposed to upgrade until SP1

[walterbyrd]

People have been saying that for years. Long before Vista was officially released, I was reading it everywhere: "don't upgrade until SP1 has been released."

With Vista sucking so bad, the upgrade cycle was not fast as msft wanted. So to eliminate at least one reason for not "upgrading" msft released SP1.

Sure, SP1 sucks. At best SP1 is useless. But, it's there. So upgrade already! Dammit!

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[stewbacca]

You have no times for fools, yet plenty of time for Vista and RC1? Who is the fool here? ;-)

Back to the issue. No I haven't installed RC1, nor have I even used Vista. Granted, I am speaking in generalities, using 15 years of experience with Microsoft. Hell, I might like Vista, but I have a long running track record of hoop jumping with ANYTHING Microsoft related. Why would this be any different, especially considering the extra negative press surrounding Vista?

My point is simply that the MS apologists say "there ARE no HOOPS!" then go on to list a litany of what most "normal" people consider jumping through hoops. Anything more than a double click and a restart is jumping through hoops, especially when compared to the relative ease of other OSes (cough, OSX, cough).

Unbelievable

[Master of Transhuman]

Their excuse is that since they tightened up security, the developers all need to recode their apps so they follow proper security guidelines that they violated years ago.

No. Bullshit. It takes the developers a YEAR to recode around some security issues? Read the comments from the developers under the article - it takes them ten times as long to code for Windows as it does for UNIX/Linux due to crappy design.

The reason there was no security on Windows is simply bad design from the get-go.

The Registry was the dumbest idea in OS history. UNIX/Linux doesn't have it - much more stable and secure. I got a client with a machine that won't install anything the other day precisely because of this crap. Windows hosed itself or one of their third party media apps hosed it. They can barely run 23 machines for two weeks without shit like this happening.

Microsoft didn't bitch for years about bad developer practices - such as QuickBooks, which was never even certified for Windows XP because of its bad practices - because they wanted the OS dominance on the desktop, instead of security for their customers.

And now they're not fixing the compatability issues because they want people to buy Vista NOW rather than wait for SP1 because their sales are flat.

People who use Windows are suckers.

Re:Unbelievable

[atamido]

I call BS on you. Even if MS didn't strictly enforce good coding practice by starting users off as "users" instead of "administrators", any IT department worth their salt should have. And applications developers were certainly aware of what were proper coding practices. Coding to the proper practices in 90% of cases wasn't any more difficult than the wrong way.

As an examples I take Firefox. In the 1.0 release they incorrectly stored the internet cache in the user's "Application Data" directory instead of "Local Settings\Application Data". It was a simple mistake, but an annoying one for anyone using roaming profiles. The next semi major release they fixed it.

The registry (as it exists in 2000 and above) is far from the dumbest idea in computer history. It is essentially a database of user (and machine) settings. It allows multiple applications to update and read settings simultaneously. It also enforces strict syntax so you can't store settings wrong or break other settings through bad coding. Any coder that doesn't feel like using the registry is always welcome to use .ini files in the user's profile with no extra effort. Given how many applications make use of the registry, I'd say it's not too bad.

Of course, it is not without it's pitfalls. Storing everything in a big binary blob means you are forced to use Windows mechanisms to read and write to it. And having all your settings in one file means that all of your settings get corrupted if the one file goes. There is also not a good way to diff the information in registries.

Personally, I'm surprised MS hasn't taken the registry is a database paradigm to the next level and offered centralized synchronization of the registry. Have a sort of "registry server" that holds the settings in a database. For roaming profiles this would let users be logged it at multiple locations and synchronize just those keys that have changed. Meh, oh well.

Re:Unbelievable

[Master of Transhuman]

You're an unbelievable idiot if you think the Registry is designed to prevent bad setups.

The Register is hoses REGULARLY by Microsoft and third party apps.

Linux NEVER has a problem with "corrupted drivers" - because there is no such thing. Drivers do not update themselves in Windows. They update Registry settings - and they regularly become corrupted requiring reinstall.

I just spent eight hours yesterday reinstalling Windows because some app screwed up the USB subsystem in XP. A perfectly good USB DVD drive wasn't recognized. Then the Windows installer became hoses, being unable to install anything without "requiring admin privileges" even when I WAS operating as Administrator. A Restore didn't help - a Repair Install didn't help. Only a clean install straightened that mess out.

This happens constantly with my clients.

Linux NEVER has these problems because Linux relies (with the exception of certain binary formatted files and the package database) on text configuration files. Once set properly, they are never updated except manually (or via the GUI front end tools which is the same thing). This is WHY Linux is FAR more reliable in operation than Windows will ever be. Apps of questionable reliability are not allowed to regularly write to a central database controlling the whole fucking OS!

"And having all your settings in one file means that all of your settings get corrupted if the one file goes."

No shit, Sherlock. So your little "lesson" in all the good the Registry does becomes moot since that is what happens frequently. And just because it might be a third party app that does that means Microsoft is off the hook to you.

Get a fucking clue.

Re:Unbelievable

[kjjsdkhfjsdusew7qiyr]

10 years of using M$ systems and never had a problem with the registry. And of course I know what most the keys mean :D
If any app ruins the registry maybe you should read more before installing crap.

Re:Unbelievable

[Master of Transhuman]

10 years and you're never had a problem with Windows.

You're a fucking idiot if you think anybody on the planet believes that shit any more.

Troll.

Oxymoron

[Zarf]

Is it worth installing? You can't upgrade to Vista. Upgrade implies and improvement...

Re:Hoops? What hoops?

[RAMMS EIN]

``So, I guess when I do a make && make install under Linux, I'm "jumping through hoops" in exactly the same manner, right? After all, I download an "installation script" for some program off the web, I "run" the file...and then the process starts!''

If it's like that, you would be jumping through some minor hoops, yes. Having to hunt down the source, dowload it, make, and make install is not how software installation works on a good linux distro.

Also, it's not realistic. More likely, you would have to go through hell and back to get it to compile at all, with missing dependencies that you have to hunt down, download, compile, and install.

Quite a bit more involved that upgrading Vista to Vista RC1, I would guess. Also, I'd like to emphasize it once more, not the normal way to install software on a decent Linux distro. And probably not worse than compiling and installing from source on Windows would be.

My opinion of your post so far: nice red herring. And then you go on and pretend _I_ am misrepresenting things.

``Also, I'll bring up that there's more than a few Linux programs these days that allow you to download and install short install script that does nothing more than download and install the full executable from some web-based distribution site. How in any way is this different than what's being described in the RC1 install docs?''

1. It doesn't (as stated) require manual interaction, such as reboots.
2. It doesn't (as stated) require reboots. (yes, that's a separate point)

Also, what does that have to do with anything? Another red herring.

``Furthermore, your "apt-get dist-upgrade" is great, but it requires you to reboot in order to take advantage of certain things such as an upgraded kernel. Since SP1 modifies the Windows kernel, it's in the exact same class as a Linux kernel patch, and most (if not all) of those require restarting the OS in order to make the changes take effect.''

Valid point, but notice the difference between "requires you to reboot in order to take advantage of certain things such as an upgraded kernel" and the grandparents "couple of reboots".

``I'll also point out that you're running an updater/installer tool (apt-get) that is functionally identical to Windows Update,''

BEEP! I wish, for the souls of all Windows users. Windows Update, at best, updates all Microsoft software. apt-get, in principle, updates _all_ software on your system, and allows you fine control about what repositories it scans and which versions of software it will install.

``so you run the command...and then the process STARTS! That fizzling sound you hear is the air leaking out of your argument.''

I am not so sure. I don't think a couple of red herrings are enough to invalidate my argument.

Right now I'm tempted to stop typing, cause I feel I'm just feeding a troll. But then, you made me go this far...I might as well continue, on the off-chance of helping someone who was misled by your arguments.

So yes. When you "apt-get dist-upgrade", the process starts. And the process consists of waiting until everything is downloaded, unpacked, configured, and installed. Perhaps you'll have to reboot in the end to start using a new version of the kernel.

The GP said something like "HOOPS?! You just 1. download file. 2. run program. and done!!", disregarding that there are actions to be taken after that, such as reboots (more than one!), which interrupt your work flow.

I agree that calling that "hoops" may be a stretch, but it's hardly what I would consider "done!", either.

``And since when is rebooting "jumping through a hoop"? If that's something you consider difficult, you're a pathetic example of a computer user.''

It's not that it's difficult, it's just that it's disrupting. And unnecesasry, as my experience with Debian shows. That's the only reason I brought up apt-get; to show that it doesn't _have_ to be as much work as it is on Windows. I fully agree that the Vista -> Vista SP1

M$ sucks!! die bill gates

[arse maker]

Seriously, no irregular major upgrade cycle OS is going to just work exactly like before. Hasn't anyone else grown up with operating system updates causing enormous issues. Even as XP for an example, I can remember for years youd have software that wouldnt work on XP only 98/ME. I think adding the HAL that stopped many direct hardware access programs working was a huge issue. Vista on the other hand... sure some things dont work, but it doesnt seem to be in the same league as from 98/ME to XP. If you arent going to change something that breaks something, you can argue was it really worth changing at all? For anything you can attack microsoft for, not providing backwards compatability is simply not one of them. They do it to products detriment every time.

Upgraded Vista SP1

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running Vista SP1 RC (32-bit and 64-bit) on multiple machines (desktops and laptops). So far, I haven't seen any problems. And on the plus side, it appears to have solved one of my major driver problems with some pro audio hardware. So now I am happily running Ableton Live 7 with under 5ms latency and no glitches on a quad-core box. Sweet.

Re:Linux continues to be the King of the "/." Hill

[ozmanjusri]

I finally got Linux working after a week out of commission.

Wow. Just wow.

Did you try to squeeze the LiveCD into the floppy drive?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Linux continues to be the King of the "/." Hill

[Allador]

I know you think you're being amusing, but this is still a real problem.

To date, over the last 10 years, trying a new version of Linux approx every other year, I have NEVER been able to get a machine working with all the built-in hardware functional without at least a week of work and the help of experts.

My last two laptops were nearly unusable on Ubuntu and suse. In both case, the video card, network card, and wifi cards didnt work out of the box.

In both cases, the screen would actually go black on the ubuntu install and never recover. We had to use the alternate install disc and modify the grub config to not show a splash screen.

How is it that STILL none of the linux systems have a default, software 640x480 character mode fallback rendering?

I'm sitting here writing this on my new HP Compaq 8710w laptop (2.4 c2d, 4gb ram, nvidia geforce fx1600m w/ 512mb onboard, 120gb 7200rpm hdd, intel 82566MM gb nic, intel 4965 agn wifi).

It runs Vista Business x64 flawlessly. Fast, rock-solid stable, no disk thrashing, great new desktop manager. Believe me, this was a surprise to me too, but there you go. It's been fast and absolutely flawless so far (couple weeks).

But kubuntu 7.10 had big problems with the video, had trouble even getting a shell to work initially, and the wifi still doesnt work, despite the fact that there is a nice intel-sponsored open-source driver for this wifi card. Suse did a bit better, and dealt with the graphics card effortlessly, but still no wifi.

In neither case (kubuntu or suse) did standby or hibernate work.

This is almost identical to my experiences a while ago with my new (at the time) Dell Latitude D630.

Re:FUD much?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are talking about completely different operating systems, nueb. I know you aren't old enough to know the difference between Windows 3.1 and Windows NT4, but they were substantial. Same with the difference between Windows 4 and Windows 2000 (Win5.0), or WinXP (Win6.0).

Yew da nueb

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT

Re:Linux continues to be the King of the "/." Hill

[ozmanjusri]

You're doing it wrong. The 8710w is a Novell certified machine.

If Windows Vista itself is RC1, SP1 must be RC2

[zukinux]

Title, says it all.

Vista == bèta

[zyberteq]

I've used Vista for a while on both my laptop and workstation. ran horribly on the laptop (P-M1.4, 1GB RAM and Radeon9200) but almost perfect on my workstation (AthlonX2 3800+, 2GB RAM, X1800XL) Thing is, the only thing I liked about Vista were some small tiny usability thingies in the explorer and the Aero interface. The rest was just Windows95 Level quality. It's been a very long time since I got angry at my computer for not doing what I wanted. But Vista made me do it. a.f.a.i.k. SP1 doesn't improve any of the parts I hate about Vista (slow networking, file management, hibernation) So I'm already back @ XP (Professional for laptop and x64 edition for workstation) and I'm happy again. I'll turn back to Vista when it has a XP level of quality. like some parent says: Vista is still in beta (just like 95 and ME were)