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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."
The first Windows XP was something that was avoided by most for over a year. Win2k was stable, rock solid, why upgrade for the eye candy?
And now everyone believes XP is the second coming or something. Just hurts your head sometimes...
When are we going to feel tired bashing Vista? Until the next Windows release?
Come on... I'm not a fan of MS and I'm posting this with Firefox but I have been running Vista on two machines -- one laptop one desktop -- and two machines on XP. i just don't see anything really bad with Vista. If nothing else, it looks more pleasant. In contrast, one of XP machine is running like snail still after several attempts to clean ups, defrags, and registry cleanings; so i don't even want to boot it up anymore.
Does the extra little candies worth your money? for some here, it is not no matter how good it is. For others, the eye candy worths everything. Isn't that what iPhone is all about?
Ludwig Wittgenstein
They may not like it because of the UAC, or because [favorite program] doesn't work, or, or, or, but the end result is that if XP suits the users better, no amount of "useful and expanded functionality" from the developers side is going to make a difference.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I cannot wait until the day Windows 7 is rolled out and all the people with their snide Vista comments begin to proclaim Vista to have been the be-all and end-all of Windows OS' and that Windows 7 is a failure on all counts.
I'll say it if no one else will. I like Vista for the most part. While there are some minor annoyances it has impressed me with its stability and increased security. I'm currently running Vista on a desktop I bought last month but I do plan on purchasing a copy and installing it on my laptop as well.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
Win2k may have been stable, but what about those of us coming from the hell that is 98/ME? For us, XP was the second coming, for no matter what problems it had, they couldn't possibly be worse than what we had to deal with before. Now we are expected to transition from a very stable, mature operating system to one that gives me nightmarish memories of the pre-XP days.
I, for one, welcome our new karma-whore sig writing overlords
My guess is that they had to add in the new shiny features while simultaneously retaining backwards compatibility with every buggy program and half-broken API they've ever released all the way back to Windows 3.1. That sort of requirement can really complicate things, and you end up having to code everything as conservatively as possible and never take any shortcuts for fear of breaking something.
If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up, and commission VMWare or someone to include functionality for running "legacy/XP" programs in a VM. Then Microsoft's legions of good programmers might be free to come out with something good, as opposed to spending all their brain cycles trying not to break old software (and still sometimes failing, I might add)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
I think it would hit home a lot more if bloggers and technical sites called Windows Vista for what it really is: Windows MPAA edition. It wasn't written for consumers, it was written to satisfy the DRM requirements of the MPAA to be fed to consumers. All that DRM down in the driver level is what is slowing it down.
I was thinking this exact same thing. For me, 2k was the best Windows OS that Microsoft had ever made. It allowed me to run old DOS stuff, had the accessibility of Win98, but was still light on it's feet, being free from the bloat that came with XP.
:1
When XP came out I used 2K for years afterwards, up until SP3 or 4, which basically crippled the stability of the OS to XP-level (everything would crash for me after a certain point, even on fresh installs, which didn't occur before).
I ended up switching to XP afterwards, and it really has become the "better" OS when compared to Vista (I still yearn for early-2K).
Now I run a separate hard drive with Vista (because I just can't afford to use it as my primary OS, it's still too crippled in too many ways), but I need >4GB of RAM for my work, and Windows 64-bit is completely unworkable. I have never been such a frustrated Microsoft customer.
All I want them to do is make a simple, light OS that stays the fuck out of my way. They could ditch almost EVERYTHING from Vista but the fact that it runs my applications, and it would be the greatest OS ever, but I don't think they will ever do this.
It's gotten to the point where I have literally considered learning how to be a programmer simply so I could make my own custom linux builds, but I figure if whole communities aren't able to get decent compatibility for Windows apps I'd never be able to in a million years.
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.
I don't use WMP11, so I don't care that the IBX codes are new or whatever. I rip DVDs and TV shows that I believe I am entitled to archive, and I don't see that Vista is going to get in the way. Please follow through on your promise and tell me what your problem is.
I don't like Vista because of the bloat and the inefficiency, etc. Also because Vista offers zero security gains to me, since I have no trouble running XP safely. In short, Vista is for dumbasses who want to blow money on excess computing power to support glassy menus. The DRM thing is a canard, in my opinion.
DRM has more to do with the content producer. By permitted more restrictive DRM, Vista is probably just enabling more content to be sold over the internet. I just won't buy what I don't want. Is this not your plan too?
Really, of all the places to make such a blanket statement, perhaps the only place worse than
Slashdot is full of early adopters, with spare computers & a penchant for hacking. It is exactly the kind of thing that someone on
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
"If I was Microsoft, I would design a new OS from the ground up..."
Big mistake! That's precisely what Microsoft and its engineers have never been able to do properly. First they had DOS (which, as you'll recall, they "got" from someone else by whatever means). Then they had Windows, based on ideas picked up from a visit to Apple (which in turn got them from Xerox PARC, but that's another story). Neither DOS nor Windows 1-2-3 was really much good as an operating system, either in terms of functionality or stability. (And don't even think about security - that wasn't on the requirements list at all).
Then came the big turning point, when Gates had the wit to hire Dave Cutler and his crew from DEC, whose management was doing such a great job of driving it under the waves despite having the most powerful engines on the high seas. Ironic, really - DEC had great hardware and software coupled with lousy management, and Microsoft had great management coupled with lousy software. Naturally DEC didn't have the wit to hire some Microsoft managers, because its own managers were too dumb to think of that.
Everything you like about Windows since the mid-1990s is directly attributable to Cutler and his team. They laid down a steel skeleton for the "Black Pearl" that was Windows 3, while (regrettably) keeping the same user interface more or less intact. The result was a series of OS - NT, 2K, and XP - all of which (once debugged) are solid clients and pretty reliable servers too. To this day much of the internals of Windows bears a striking resemblance to the internals of VMS, right down to the names of data structures.
The trouble with Vista was precisely that Microsoft tried to get clever and creative. The further they get from the original NT steel skeleton, the more lost they are. (Don't even get me started on WinFS, which they never even managed to deliver).
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.