The Advantages of Upgrading From Vista To XP

An anonymous reader passes us a blog posting, which may be just a bit tongue-in-cheek, about the pros and cons of upgrading from Vista to XP. "...there is only one conclusion to be made; Microsoft have really outdone themselves in delivering a brand new operating system that really excels in all the areas where Vista was sub-optimal. From my testing, discussions with friends and colleagues, and a review of the material out there on the web there seems to be no doubt whatsoever that that upgrade to XP is well worth the money. Microsoft can really pat themselves on the back for a job well done, delivering an operating system which is much faster and far more reliable than its predecessor. Anyone who thinks there are problems in the Microsoft Windows team need only point to this fantastic release and scoff loudly."

Comments

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[Scudsucker]

XP's improvement over Windows 2000 was to bring NT to the home user. Home users were stuck with 98SE or ME up until XP.

The only "bringing it to the home user" was in putting out a cheaper castrato, XP Home. 2000 ran old programs just fine, worked with hardware just fine, and once MS released DX for 2000, it ran games just fine as well.

Stop it, stop it

[Henry V .009]

The anti-Vista whining has gotten more annoying than the silly "M$" thing or the Slashdot trolls talking about Microsoft users sucking Bill's cock.

The genuine problems with Vista (the multiple versions, the price, lack of solid drivers) were exhausted as a subject months ago. Since then, the computer press has acted like a bunch of 15-year-olds with a nerd fetish. Vista is actually somewhat nice.

Backup management is a hell of a lot nicer in Vista -- XP almost forced you to go with a third-party app. UAC works very well, and makes running Windows as a limited user a reasonable experience -- in XP it was doable, but a serious pain. System restore is _much_ improved with Vista, something I noticed after a borked nVidia RAID driver update. The performance and reliability wizards that can go through and look at which of your apps are crashing are a nice little idea. There are hundreds of these little improvements. It's not god's gift computer nerds, but it's not that bad either.

And yes, I am a Linux sys admin. At any given time I probably have more Linux boxes running than Windows boxes.

Re:Dear MS, Add DX10 to XP and just get it over wi

[Zymergy]

That may be accurate in some cases, but it appears that it has more to do with the REQUIREMENT from Microsoft to only use their SOFTWARE mixer in Vista, thus breaking nearly all Hardware audio effects (my read is: for *DRM* requirements):

"...DirectSound3D on Windows Vista
With Microsoft's decision to remove the audio hardware layer in Windows Vista, legacy DirectSound 3D games will no longer use hardware 3D algorithms for audio spatialization. Instead they will have to rely upon the new Microsoft software mixer that is built into Windows Vista. This new software mixer will give the users basic audio support for their old Direct Sound games but since it has no hardware layer, all EAX® effects will be lost, and no individual per-voice processing can be performed using dedicated hardware processing.

EAX has become the de facto standard for real-time effects processing. It has been incorporated in hundreds of games and has become the method of choice for game developers wanting to add interactive environment effects to their titles. Some of the best selling games of all time use the EAX extensions to DirectSound 5.0 and beyond, including Warcraft3, Diablo2, World of Warcraft, Half Life, Ghost Recon, F.E.A.R. and many others. Under Windows Vista, these games will be losing the hardware support that came as standard under the previous Windows Operating Systems, and will no longer provide real-time interactive effects, making them sound empty and lifeless by comparison to the way they sound on Windows XP.

In some cases, where a game specifically looks for a hardware audio path, it may even fall back to plain stereo output. This will be a very different landscape for 3D audio than the one that both Creative Labs and Aureal Technologies® pioneered 8 years ago. Both companies dedicated hardware power to rendering increasing numbers of 3D voices, with each voice taking full advantage of HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) technology, wave tracing and other advanced processing. With the native Windows Vista audio APIs, all this advanced, hardware-based 3D audio processing will be inaccessible. Instead, basic mapping to a generic speaker placement scheme will be employed, and all interactive processing and rendering will be dependent on the host CPU. While it is true that CPUs continue to get faster, the Vista audio architecture intentionally simplifies things, such that the potential processing load for multiple 3D voices is limited. Inevitably there is a tradeoff. This will be especially true for gamers that have come to depend on the kind of high-end 3D audio experience available from products like the SoundBlaster X-Fi, with its advanced headphone 3D audio processing and dedicated hardware DSP effects. For gamers this would be the most noticeable loss in Windows Vista, and it would be a definite step backwards for PC gaming audio if developers only had the option of using native Windows Vista audio APIs. However, they do have a legitimate, proven alternative in OpenAL..." http://www.openal.org/openal_vista.html

the key to a (more) stable MS Windows install

[Tumbleweed]

1) If existing OS: run complete antivirus scan and clean existing install, fix everything. Then run a GOOD antivirus scanner (I like Kaspersky), and do it right.

2) Format system disk.

3) Install new MS OS (Win2K or better)

4) Install all updates EXCEPT: .Net

5) Remove unnecessary schmutz (unneeded services, drivers, games, etc.)

6) Replace MS MediaPlayer with Media Player Classic.

7) Do not install any further MS software

8) Ever.

9) Seriously, not ever.

10) It's not that hard, and will very rarely crash.

11) Oh yeah, don't install too many Adobe apps, either, and keep as much crap from auto-starting as possible (Adobe gamma, Adobe Reader starter, etc.).

12) Don't use Internet Explorer (any version - the people who tell you IE7 is 'okay' are idiots).

Put some hardware in between your machine and the Internet at large. Being behind even a simple NAT box will help enormously.

Enjoy.

Re:the key to a (more) stable MS Windows install

[Dr_Barnowl]

12) Don't use Internet Explorer (any version - the people who tell you IE7 is 'okay' are idiots).

Put some hardware in between your machine and the Internet at large. Being behind even a simple NAT box will help enormously. I find these two to be the crux of it ; .NET is actually useful and won't impede normal operations because it doesn't even load unless you load an app that uses it.

Don't install components you don't use (like IIS). Turn off unnecessary system services. If you have good digital hygiene habits, don't bother with an antivirus. If you have a tidy filesystem, don't bother with indexing (Google Desktop is better anyway).

The main Windows problem is the profusion of services, in terms of both security and bloat. Some ISPs now routinely block some of the more vunerable ports, but this is the major reason to be behind a NAT, regardless of which OS you run. A router runs a small OS and only necessary services, all of which are expected to be attacked and coded cautiously.

IE vulnerabilities are the worst ; my sister-in-law infected her PC with 427 nasties just by clicking on things. Had to nuke the disc from orbit ; it was the only way to be sure. She now runs Ubuntu. No complaints yet.

Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[PCM2]

Every time I hear about Vista on Slashdot, somebody has to jump in with the "DRM, DRM, DRM!" I've had Vista installed for months, and I can tell you there is no DRM problem in Vista. The stuff you hear about has something to do with playing HD content from their computer over HDMI -- or something -- and nobody does that. Repeat after me:

• Vista plays MP3s just fine.
• Vista plays AVIs of your favorite shows just fine.
• Vista plays DVDs just fine.
• You can run software to rip DVDs on Vista.
• You can rip CD audio on Vista.
• You can convert your DVD movies to AVIs on Vista.
• If none of that is good enough for you, you can install a couple plug-ins in Vista and play all the Ogg and Matroska files you want.

Seriously, Vista does kinda suck, but when you go around talking about how it sucks for reasons that aren't even true you kinda just sound like a dumbass fanboy.

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[h4rm0ny]

Seriously, Vista does kinda suck, but when you go around talking about how it sucks for reasons that aren't even true you kinda just sound like a dumbass fanboy.

I sound like a "dumbass fanboy" because I expressed a dislike of DRM? In an entire thread filled with loathing for Vista, the person who was asking about behind the scenes improvements in it is the one you jump on for being a "dumbass fanboy"?

I dislike DRM because it interferes with my own use of something that I have bought. By implementing the content protection that Vista now has, Microsoft have enabled companies to impose that DRM on me where before they were forced to deal with me fairly and sell me an unemcumbered product. So yes, I am perfectly entitled to dislike the fact that Vista has it. Unless your definition of "dumbass fanboy" is someone who can demonstrate an actual harm to them, then maybe you'd like to reconsider your words?

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[bmgoau]

Reduced Functionality mode is only instated when Vista isnt fully licenced and activated, not when it has been turned off for a while.

Infact funnily enough the period between install and reduced functionality due to incorrect activation is exactly the time period your quoted.

Try out thepiratebay for a permanently activated version of Windows Vista.

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[h4rm0ny]

You have failed to demonstrate an actual harm. What precisely is it that Vista does that you are mad about? "impose that DRM on me" sounds like you don't actually know what you can't do on Vista that you would want to do.

Why do you think it sounds like I don't know what Vista restricts me from doing? I just explained the problem with the DRM, but I can happily go into more detail for you if you wish:

Firstly, we'd better clarify what DRM technologies Vista introduces and the effect they have. There is Protected User Mode Audio (PUMA) which prevents copying of audio that the OS detects as copyrighted. It also limits what devices the audio file can be played from, presumably to prevent high-quality copies being made. PUMA also prevents the audio file being played on a non-approved player. I.e. any audio software must be have a licence from Microsoft which can be revoked. I don't think this is fully implemented yet, but it's billed as one of the new features in Vista so its presumably going to be installed shortly (whether you want it or not).

Next there are the Protected Video Path - Output Protection Management or PVP-OPM and Protected Video Path - User Accessible Bus or PVP-UAB. These two technologies are the video equivalents to the Protected Audio technology. Again, they prevent copying of files that Windows considers copyrighted and prevents their playback on non-approved hardware devices and software. This is already in there and active.

Vista is also the first MS OS to properly implement TPM - chip-based encryption on the motherboard which could have some very negative effects down the line but which I'll save for another post to keep this one to the point.

So what is the demonstrable harm of these technologies in Vista? Well to start with the least subtle problem, it blocks the use of a lot of existing hardware. Many of us have output devices - monitors, projectors - that would be perfectly capable of playing HD formats if Vista didn't refuse to co-poerate with these "uncertified" devices. Some people might not care about Vista forcing you to buy new hardware that the manufacturer has paid the appropriate technology licences for, but for the rest of, we have other demands on our money.

I know someone is going to try and explain to me that Vista doesn't prevent me playing HD content on non-approved hardware so I'll pre-empt that, I hope. It will let you play your own HD content or anything where the producer allows it. That isn't any of the HD movies that are released which is pretty much all the HD content out there. In short - yes, you can play HD content on non-approved devices so long as its nothing that you'd ever care about. ;)

HOWEVER, that's not the really big concern. There are more subtle problems with DRM. The technologies above mean two things that I care about and which most other people here care about. The first concerns the ability to write software for Windows. Vista is so designed that only approved software can access certain content. It will be a poorer software world if only commercial projects paying their tithe to Microsoft can make full use of the operating system and its content.

The second is what this means for other operating systems. DRM is an inherently closed system (unless someone wants to come up with a significantly different take on it than both Apple and Microsoft have so far). Therefore, by encouraging content companies to sell only in DRM format (and DRM is pointless if you don't), they prevent other OS's or devices from any legal means to purchase the same content.

The third is a concern about the future. If I'm expected to spend money on building a collection of audio and video, then I need to know that what I've bought is mine. I need to know that when I move the files to my next computer, or when I want to take them with me on my music player, or when the company that sold them to me isn't there anymore, that I ca

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[zarthrag]

What do you mean by "correctly"? I went through the process and it said it was active/genuine. I just run XP 99% of the time. Kinda sad that I have to crack my OS along with my games (to avoid having to insert a disc when harddrive space is damn near free.)

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[Sparr0]

The stuff you hear about has something to do with playing HD content from their computer over HDMI -- or something -- and nobody does that. Vista also cripples DRM'd HD content over DVI (without HDCP) and VGA, which PLENTY of people do. I know dozens of people who do laptop->TV via VGA and DVI on a regular basis, and maybe ten who have HTPCs of one sort or another connected via VGA or DVI. My current desktop has plenty of horsepower to run Vista, but no HDCP support, so god help me if I was using Vista to watch my HD content on my projector.

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

You make some good points, but you miss the fact that the DRM technologies in Vista aren't new.

PUMA is a new version of the Secure Audio Path that shipped in Windows XP with Windows Media Player 9.

WM-DRM requires applications to either use the Windows Media framework or obtain a certificate, as you say. What you didn't say is that this is also the case on XP. In fact, WM-DRM is OS agnostic - it is the files that are encrypted to prevent playback without an "approved" player (or a DRM crack).

PVP-OPM is new in Vista, but it was previously implemented in device drivers on XP. Anyone who has tried to play a DVD with an official player (e.g. PowerDVD or WinDVD) over component on an ATI or NV card knows this.

TPM support in Vista is only used for BitLocker, which is only in two versions of Vista (Enterprise and Ultimate) anyway. Most consumer systems do not ship with a TPM.

DRM "like Vista has" has already existed for a long time. It's called WM-DRM, and it has been a part of Windows for almost 6 years now, ever since Windows Media Player 8 came out.

Re:Jesus, give it up with the DRM already!

[mangobrain]

In the end, my housemate had to give me his SSN, date of birth, employee data, and everything needed to log into the website from my computer. I saved a local copy and emailed it to him when I was done printing it.

I'm not excusing the complete and utter stupidity of Vista's behaviour, but:

• It's a PDF, you say. Have Microsoft "embraced and extended" HTTP to include privacy flags, or is the flag part of the PDF specs, and hence Adobe's wonderful idea?
• Couldn't your housemate have just installed a different browser? (Again, not excusing Vista here as you shouldn't have to do this, but it's not news that Internet Explorer is crap.)
• You say this person is your housemate. Couldn't you just let them use your computer for five minutes (then delete saved form data, cache, and whatever else you would deem necessary) instead of giving you their personal info to perform the download on their behalf?

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[DaveWick79]

MS has extended the XP OEM date until June 20, 2008, and if demand is still strong they will extend it beyond that. I would be very surprised if they cut it out of the OEM channel before 2009.

Vista is really annoying...

[rabtech]

Vista is really annoying because it has several important, useful, and/or cool features that really make it a better OS, for example:

1. IO Scheduling - the scheduler now tracks IO requests and priorities, not just CPU time. This is probably my #1 complaint with almost any OS: Any app can bring the system to a crawl by issuing constant disk IO, regardless of how much CPU time it is using. Use up a lot of memory to cause swapping and you can effectively DoS just about any system even with no admin rights whatsoever. But since Vista considers IO in its scheduling a low-priority process can't flood the disk with requests. No technical reason this can't be back-ported to XP.

2. Hot-patching - long overdue, but at least it is being delivered. Other than swapping out the kernel there is no excuse for rebooting to install or update any subsystem. There is no technical reason why this can't be supported by XP.

3. User-mode driver framework - Even if we can't have microkernels, at least we can start moving more stuff into user mode. The audio subsystem is one of these. Frankly, except for some very minor pieces, not only should most drivers live in user mode I think most drivers should use a form of managed code as well (perhaps with some deterministic GC or other memory management mechanism). Switching ring levels isn't the massively huge hit it was on older x86 processors. Again, no reason this can't be supported by XP.

4. DirectX scheduler and video virtualization - long overdue; let the OS virtualize the 3d hardware and dish time out to any app that needs to do some rendering. We've all been over the DirectX 10 scandal before and are well aware that it could be back-ported to XP.

5. Explorer improvements - more multi-threaded (less blocking) and (FINALLY) it doesn't b0rk an entire file copy job just because one file failed... now you can retry or skip the offending item. Welcome to 1993, apparently.

6. Pending IO cancellation - the IO subsystem finally understands how to cancel pending IOs. Ever had a zombie process that wouldn't go away, even though you did an End Process or kill on it? It probably had an incomplete network or disk IO request out there, but under XP and earlier Windows can't cleanup the process until all the IOs are finished. In Vista the IO subsystem understands how to cancel the IO, or if it can't be cancelled will automatically take care of cleaning it up when it returns... no need for the process to stick around waiting on a request to complete that it doesn't give a shit about. Again, this should have been part of an XP service pack.

7. Async SMB/Net - All the SMB/Net calls and apps support async IO now, so you can finally CTRL+C a 'net view \\machine' command and have it terminate immediately, instead of having to wait 60 seconds for that CTRL+C to register while the network operation is blocking. This one I can't even understand... Windows has supported non-blocking IO since the original NT. IO Completion Ports (essentially callbacks when an IO operation is complete) are fast and used throughout Windows for all sorts of things. Except in this one area.

8. Kernel transactions - now the Registry and supported filesystems (NTFS), along with any subsystem or kernel object that cares to implement support for it, can participate in transactions. This one makes installations far easier and simpler - just run all your registry and file updates inside a transaction and commit when done. Also makes hot-patching support easier, since running processes keep their open handles to the previous version of the file prior to the transaction. All filesystem should have supported transactions in like 1995; no idea why it has taken this long.

9. Shadow Copies exposed - this one is really dumb; XP already supports shadow copies, it just doesn't expose them to you. Again, something we should have seen on clients several years ago when disk space started getting really cheap. Empty sectors on a disk are like empty blocks of memory: a complete waste. Just as ever

Re:Vista is really annoying...

[ledow]

Not aimed at the poster directly:

Vista *is* really annoying because it has several important, useful, and/or cool features that really make it a better OS, that everyone else has had for years, if not decades, for example, let's take a basic Linux system (yeah, I know, flame me but people praising Vista for historical, if not archaic, "features" is really beginning to get on my nerves):

1. IO Scheduling - In the versions of Linux I've personally used, (2.0.30-something up to current), no app can bring the system to a crawl by issuing constant disk IO. If you use up a lot of memory and cause swapping, and you are not checking processes for such things, you can effectively DoS just about any system - but not without admin rights. No technical reason why this hasn't been in Windows since at least '95.

2. Hot-patching - On Linux, always been there. You just don't reboot, ever, so long as you know what process to kill/restart. You can even boot into newer kernels if you use some of the patches around (two-kernel monte I know it as, it's not used much if at all). Also you don't get the crappy "this file is in use" rubbish when trying to upgrade over existing files. There is no technical reason why this couldn't have been done since forever under Windows.

3. User-mode driver framework - Basically caused by the fact that buggy drivers and crappy kernel programming can cause any silly little driver crash and take a Windows system down. Now that's "fixed" in Windows (it'll just crash the user-mode process), your performance takes a bit of a hit. But yes, it's a step forward for Windows - and been possible since day one (in fact a lot of driver writers CHOSE to do this under Windows because it just worked better when the kernel was buggy). Again, no reason this couldn't have been supported before XP. Linux gains from in-kernel maintained drivers here, granted, you can see that from the way nvidia/ati/other proprietry kernel drivers can do some funky things. User-space drivers are prevelant and quite stable (the first-gen captive-NTFS etc. stuff, libusb etc.). Kernel drivers in the "official" kernel are extremely stable.

4. DirectX scheduler and video virtualization - Admittedly I hadn't seen this feature on the list of stuff that's new to Vista - it sounds good in theory. Dunno how it works in practice, so I can't really comment. I don't do graphics, though, so this might have been a feature of high-end graphics workstations for decades.

5. Explorer improvements - more multi-threaded (less blocking) and (FINALLY) it doesn't b0rk an entire file copy job just because one file failed... now you can retry or skip the offending item. Welcome to 1993, apparently. -- Don't even need to comment on this line - get a decent file manager that doesn't tie itself into the OS and can copy more than a few thousand files at random without dying mysteriously.

6. Pending IO cancellation - kill. kill -SIGHUP. kill -SIGTERM. kill-SIGKILL. 90% of things will die before you hit the fourth option. *Anything* will die when you do on the last one, no matter what. I don't know how I tolerated taskmanager "kills" for so long.

7. Async SMB/Net - Here I won't comment. Linux struggles with this also because Samba struggles with this still. I can still get massive pauses when running SMB/CIFS mounts if the underlying transport dies for a few seconds. It can be a pain to get it to restart. I'd say that's a no-score-draw given that it's SMB and that's an MS protocol (not historically, perhaps, but in spirit). SMB needs a fix, here, and smbmount needs a kick up the bum to make it easier/safer to umount when the underlying transport has died.

8. Kernel transactions - All filesystem should have supported transactions in like 1995; no idea why it has taken this long. -- Seconded.

9. Shadow Copies exposed -- Seconded. It's possible on most filesystems on Linux in one way or another (even if it means a third-party app like the one I stumbled on the other day, but it's a li

Re:Vista is really annoying...

[Junta]

1. IO scheduling is a relatively recent addition to the Linux world as well. IO operations could very much screw over the performance the CPU scheduler was trying to create. It's just that those cases at least under linux were a bit more corner case, but you could definitely run into issues with IO load and notice particularly in real-time apps (i.e. a movie player).

2. Hot patching - I think this has been *possible* under Windows architecture, it's just that MS has been overcautious and lazy, not realizing the irritation they would create. To the credit of being overzealous and lazy, right now I've installed libcairo updates, and *know* the changes aren't in effect in my in-memory copies of programs, and nothing so much as a note telling a less savvy user that this is the case. Firefox bothers to tell you because it's the program I've noticed first and foremost get confused by on-disk updates different from in-memory copies, but the vast majority of library updates don't automatically restart the relevant processes (and if, say, a libcairo update would cause that, the user experience wouldn't be much better, as 98% of the apps the user was actually using would restart, not really better than a reboot).

3. User-mode drivers under linux are not looked kindly upon in aggregate. Note, for example, the userland ZFS drivers, which discussions have indicated as being a poor-performer, due to the user-land nature. If MS has a path for userland drivers to be faster than Linux' userland drivers, that would be something to their credit. Or, of course, they could have decided it was worth the price and it contributes to the sluggishness Vista is accused of.

5. I don't know how explorer is 'tied to the OS', but explorer can be skipped in favor of a shell replacement and alternative file managers do exist. I don't know personally about them though.

6. That isn't a good characterization of process killing under Linux. Processes in Zombie state do not get killed that easily. However, zombie processes aren't *that* bad, but their existence either reflects a very bad state of the parent process (generally what the person noticing the bad performance is actually afflicted by) or by bad coding practice (some things do get fancy with SIGCHLD and screw it up). But the original comment was more along the lines of processes in uninterruptable sleep, which is really annoying and absolutely something that still bites a Linux system to this day. I don't know if Vista does a better job than Linux with whatever is described, or it's just brought to the same level, but Linux is not without unkillable tasks for various reasons.

The first thing to realize is that Linux is far from perfect, there is always room for improvement. I wouldn't even be surprised if by some very specific feature, Vista managed to pull something off, but I'm not about to pay a dime to be able to make that determination one way or another, since Linux platforms serve me well and generally the community recognizes the shortcomings and works them. If not, FreeBSD or someone else would displace it given time.

Re:Vista is really annoying...

[Foolhardy]

Responding by number:

1. IO priorities. Yes, these are quite nice, although it'd be nice if more than 2 priorities were implemented (currently only background and normal are supported). Memory priorities are new in Vista as well, and are also quite useful.

3. Much of the UMDF has been backported to XP as a redistributable.

6. IO cancellation. The NT kernel has always supported cancellation of pending async IRPs. The kernel always tries to cancel pending IRPs in a dying process so it can be terminated. However, there have been places where drivers would hold on to an IRP for a long time without letting it be canceled, and some of the places where that was happening have been addressed in Vista. A notable case was during a MUP open, i.e. when the system was trying to locate the host and service behind a UNC path. Vista does now allow cancellation of a synchronous IO operation, which previously could only be done by killing the thread.

5. Shell multithreading. I don't agree that Explorer and the shell have become substantially more multithreaded. Synchronous IO is still done heavily in the GUI thread, which causes the window to stop responding. The aforementioned ability to cancel sync. IO in another thread was added to make it possible to abort such blocking, which is a poor workaround.

7. Async IO in SMB (the LanmanRedirector filesystem internally). It has always supported async IO. The new CTRL+C ability to abort is used to cancel synchronous IO in the UI thread. One issue is that some APIs can only be done synchronously, such as file opens. You can only associate a file with an IOCP after the file is opened. From the application perspective, this could be fixed by having worker threads do the blocking open operations in the background.

8. Transactions. Yes, very nice. The transaction engine is even extensible: ISVs can add their own transaction resources (MS SQL server supports this), and the DTC service can coordinate them across multiple machines.

9. VSS put to better use. Well, Microsoft has a bad habit of putting good features into the system and then dropping the ball when it comes to making use of them. It's like the teams don't communicate with each other. Something that XP did use VSS for was in ntbackup, to archive a locked file by copying the shadow version. Vista backup does not supports this, and ntbackup is incompatible with Vista.

In the end, I'm with you: until they fix the things that have been broken in Vista, I plan to stay with XP and 2003 for some time.

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[paganizer]

hI.
I'm from the Win2k underground.
We've managed to patch all the crippleware that "insists" on XP so that it runs (better, of course) on Win2k.
Just look around via Google, or ask on the win2k usenet groups.
The only things you can't do with Win2k PRO at this point:
Run a circa 2003-2004 hyperthreading CPU well. It'll run ok, but not well.
Run a 64-bit CPU well. They limited 64-bit support to only high-end server versions of win2k.
"Two Worlds" is presenting problems. We are still working on it.

Re:Vist... *out of resources*

[j79zlr]

Trust me, they didn't retain backwards compatibility. My scanner does not work with Vista. I am a Mechanical Engineer and barely any of my vendor software works with Vista. Carrier's HAP load calc software does not work. Bell & Gossett's pump selection software does not work. AAON rooftop unit selection software does not work. AutoCAD 2006 does not work. These are large companies whose software does not work, Autodesk undoubtedly used this a forced upgrade opportunity though. Carrier HAP is a $1500 program. AutoCAD is a $4000 program. Why would I spend hundreds on an OS that will force me to spend thousands on software and hardware upgrades. Luckily my IT department agrees.

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[Scudsucker]

Which only happened subsequent to, and directly attributable to, the release of XP.

Nonsense. Microsoft developed and released the same versions of DirectX for Windows 9x and Windows 2000 at the same time. And when they didn't, it was only as a lame reason to "encourage" people to upgrade, to ME, XP and now Vista. Furthermore, DX 8 was almost certainly developed on 2000, not XP - you don't want to be developing stuff like this on a beta OS. Same with DX10 and XP - there is no reason for Microsoft NOT to release DX10 for XP other than to strongarm some sales of Vista..

Re:You are wrong

[edwdig]

MS's Remote Desktop works a lot better than VNC. VNC does screen scraping and sends the final bitmap over the connection. Remote Desktop sends the drawing commands over the connection, requiring it to transfer a lot less data to do the same thing.

For home systems, yeah, remote access isn't very common. But it is common for people to access their office computers from home.

VISTA - Speed, Stability, and System Recovery

[Proudrooster]

I took the VISTA plunge (as a test) on a new laptop. I plan to upgrade to XP over Christmas break. VISTA drivers are still pretty rough and have crash issues. I think I finally have achieved a stable laptop with no blue screens, but system performance is an issue. VISTA just idling consumes about 10% of the CPU, not to mention it is always waking the harddrive up. Amazingly, VISTA (the new king of all multimedia) doesn't have a built-in app that uses a USB webcam... very strange.

My biggest beef is that the VISTA System Recovery software doesn't work. I did a complete VISTA backup to DVD and wanted to test a system restore. I booted the VISTA CD and selected Restore Entire System but the restore software doesn't recognize the DVD backup set. This irked me since laptops no longer come with restore media, so I guess it is back to Ghost.

My feeling is that VISTA is much akin to Windows ME which was the retarded cousin on Win98. Everyone knows that VISTA is a hyperactive drooling OS and most will just take a step back and see what MS churns out next, or move to Ubuntu. At least my plan is to put VISTA back in the box and ignore it.

No un-$igned drivers in 64-bit Vista

[tepples]

Windows Vista 64-bit edition does not load any unsigned kernel-mode drivers, and it does not load test-signed drivers outside of an ugly "test mode". It costs $500 per year to get a code signing certificate from VeriSign. (Google will tell you more.) Providers of assistive technologies, especially individuals and small non-profit organizations, often can't afford this expense.

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[abionnnn]

Here's my "Vista experience".

I was helping my dad who wanted to purchase a laptop. Now I'm not anti-Microsoft, but from all I had read about Vista, I didn't have a positive opinion of it. I told him to find a laptop with XP on it, but upon entering many major stores, we discovered there weren't any.

To cut a long story short, despite all my advice he decided to acquire a machine that came with Vista. The machine itself was quite "beefy", 1.8GHz core duo, 1 gig of ram, etc. but it still took it about 4 minutes to boot up Vista the first time. I was a little worried and so was he. But the second time took "only" around 2 minutes so he was happy.

He used throughout all of the next day with no problems, even though he was wondering why it was so "sluggish" for "such a powerful computer" in his perspective. Then, on the 3rd fateful day he decided to install AutoCAD. Though it installed fine, it refused to run. I consulted many online forums and the problem seemed repeatable with no known solution. By this time my dad decided to wipe Vista and use XP instead.

It took two hours and a half to wipe Vista, install XP, find all the relevant drivers and install them. As soon as we "upgraded" to XP, he was very happy with his cheap laptop. It was a "very powerful" computer indeed.

Finally, some advice for readers with parents considering the purchase of a Vista machine: attempt to convince them not to. Even if you like Vista, you will have to clean up the mess...

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[DrXym]

My experience of Vista has been mixed but overall I believe that its better than XP assuming you customize it a bit.

On the downside, the UAC is annoying and untrainable so I have disabled it. I don't know why they can't allow a user to train Vista to make an exception of one particular program rather than bugging them each time they launch it. Vista also doesn't sleep / hibernate properly - on more than one occasion I've put it to sleep and come back to find it running. Maybe my hardware is the cause but its annoying. I've also had minor incompatibility issues with developer tools like Developer Studio which I finally resolved after some googling.

On the plus side, the desktop is far cleaner and better organized than XP. Aero glass looks lovely and filled with useful features such as thumbnails of windows. File Explorer is also far better and I find the ability to bookmark folders I frequent a major time saver. I am definitely more productive through the new interface. Aside from devtools I haven't encountered any major issues running older apps. I run lots of open source tools as well as DVD rippers / burners and so far no problems whatsoever.

Re:Just in time for the holidays!

[Evangelion]

One theory has been that Microsoft astroturfers post porn in threads that are damaging to Microsoft, so as to get web censoring software to classify the URL as adult content.