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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.
"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.
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"?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
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.
In an effort to conform with internet communication standards, please note that the above comment is 100% biased opinion
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.
.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.
.dot rise and fall will understand me.
.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.
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,
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
So I'm just beginning to invest heavily my spare time in learning
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".
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?
*sigh* back to work...
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.
Jeremy