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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."
Now if only MS could release a version of XP that didn't have the activation stuff. Get rid of all of the DRM that is in Windows now, aid then they would be "customer friendly".
Quit trying to make the software stop working, and concentrate on making it work all of the time.
Of course, if the customer experience is terrible, nobody would bother trying to pirate Windows.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
It's really sad when you see how much power is truly lost on vista. I setup a Mac the other day for a client, and it was also running XP through parallels. It ran both just fine with only one gig of ram. A virtual machine, and two entire operating systems... and most PC's out there that are not quad cores with two gigs of ram run like shit. I used to be a microsoft fanboy... -But sadly the tides are changing.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
Other than DX10.x in Vista for purposefully DX10.x limited specific games releases (HALO 3, et al), what IS the killer app in Vista?
(Don't flame me man! I am serious, what is the Real "advantage" to Vista for gamers?) What is the performance advantage? Is it designed to fully take advantage of future generations of multiple quad-core processors with 8+GB of RAM and not really current hardware which is not optimized to utilize it?
Not intending to get into a flame war at all, I have used Vista and I just don't get it.. why the bloat? Why so much DRM? Why specifically break Direct3d and EAX and force the rapid development of OpenAL sound cards and drivers, etc.. Why completely eliminate the look and feel of the UI users have mastered since Win9x/2k (or at least leave a Classic Win2k option for the UI) I play my games in XP and I love it. Once WINE, etc.. can match the performance in gaming of native XP, this discussion will then be between XP and XP emulation.
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Well firstly I'm just curious as for the last five years I've developed exclusively on Linux platforms. Secondly, Vista will inevitably improve as bugs are ironed out and driver and application support improves. (It may never be as good as XP though due to the unacceptable DRM), so I want to know if we will ultimately be left with a better system than XP - is this a necessary step back to go forward further? Presumably if Vista does offer better functionality under the bonnet then it could be progress has been made after all. I feel very sorry for the developers who worked on Vista at the moment. It's not as if I'm suddenly going to install Vista (DRM!) but I actually have some idea of what a major effort it takes to produce a working OS and its received nothing but abuse since [before] it was released.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I think the GP is thinking about WinFS... I think MS meant to deceive here, because I had previously also thought that it was the actual file-system before reading the Wikipedia page just now, naturally having thought that WinFS would be the successor to NTFS... Instead, it turns out that it was only meant to be a database backend for things such as Outlook contacts or whatnot, usable by most applications - but knowing MS, it would only work for their programs.
I remember the "group" who used Win2k and didn't see the point in switching the XP. XP wasn't an upgrade or a downgrade. It was a "new" Desktop-targeted OS that was based on NT instead of DOS/9x. So there was no reason for Win2k users to switch to XP since Win2k was already that.
/. users using Win2k, myself included, but the average desktop was running 9x/ME and there was huge incentive for those users to upgrade to XP.
But that completely forgets all of the 98 and ME users that XP was made for. XP was definitely "the second coming" for those users. It was a HUGE upgrade. In terms of both stability and features. No more blue screens. No more FAT filesystem etc. Most desktop users didn't use Win2k. It was mostly developers and power users. So yeah, there was probably a lot of
Now everyone is using XP for the most part. I haven't used Vista yet, but from what I've heard it doesn't really offer any reason to "upgrade". I was, and still am, curious and am kind of anxious to try it out. But I'm happy with XP and haven't heard any compelling reasons to feel any kind of need to switch.
I'm not disagreeing with you as I've not thought about it enough to say whether my own idea is good or bad, but I think rather than longer development cycles, they might actually need shorter ones. The Linux world seems to make excellent progress with numerous small increments. This of course necessitates a quite modular approach to developing the OS (with the most dramatic example being the separation of OS from Window Manager), but this actually leads to a much greater stability as you aren't suddenly shifting from one system to something very new and different, with all the headaches of testing, driver release, app compatability etc., etc. that this causes.
If a new release of Linux came out ever five years, I think we'd see massive problems with each new release of that, as well.
Of course the release schedule is driven by marketing, rather than developers so it might seem academic, but I have a suggestion to Microsoft on the million to one chance that Ballmer is reading through these articles in a dark fit of depression. A better solution would be to take an incremental approach to Windows releases and to make money through a subscription process. We know that customers resent being forced to go through an expensive upgrade cycle. Wouldn't the pill be easier to swallow if so long as they paid their very modest subscription to Microsoft, the updates just kept rolling down. One day it doesn't support a journaling files system, the next day it does - much like Ubuntu updates? Microsoft want to be in a service industry, providing media packages and other options with a steady stream of income, not a risky forecasting of sales for each new OS or version of Office. Wouldn't a subscription model suit that better, enabling lots of services to be rolled into one? And at a stroke you've cut down on vast amounts of piracy of the Windows OS. It's surely better to have a million users paying $24 a year than it is 500,000 maybe paying $80 once every five years. New PCs would as usual just come with a modest 1 year subscription free!
I know that I'd be happy with this model and a lot less resentful of seeing the big cost of the OS added to the price of the PC as one big extra cost. There are so many things that could be rolled into a subscription model in other areas of Microsoft's business that its almost silly.
The more I think about this, the more it seems like a good idea for both Microsoft and its customers. They're no longer competing with other proprietary OS's (bar the Macs). They're competing with free. And you can't do that by demanding $100 from people. You can do it by asking for a couple of dollars a month and people feeling that they're getting something good in return. If anyone knows the chair launching one, point him in my direction would you?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Ok, in IT, there's essentially two paradigms. Microsoft and !Microsoft (which that alone is a sign on how succesfull MS are).
The !Microsoft oriented people seem to have a lot more distaste for Microsoft stuff than the other way round, and article postings such as this one is evidence of that. Being, let's say, heavily based in Microsoft, I have tried and indeed on occasion promote OSS tech over MS tech sometimes, and the same goes for my colleagues. Every time I've asked someone bad-mouthing MS stuff how much time they've given to Vista for instance, and the response is along the lines of "fuck off n00b".
Now, I don't think for a minute that if Microsoft could wave a magic wand and have OSS disappear they wouldn't (no matter how expensive that wand might be), but you all miss a trick here. For Microsoft people, this war isn't about religion, it's ultimately about money. That means any anti-Linux propaganda they may (or may not) push out is calculated with a cool head.
On slashdot, anti-microsoft propaganda is often pure bitching and rabid foaming at the mouth by some obscure geek sat at home with an opinion the rest of the world doesn't care about. Sometimes you guys have a point, let's not pretend it's all ranting (not even nearly), but you must realise, school-ground article submissions like this one only serve to make you look like kids, and very unprofessional. That image sticks, and spreads too - all of which is a shame BECAUSE FOSS projects genuinely have thier own niche in the IT universe.
Remember, IT isn't religion, it's a profession, a skill, a choice, whatever. Microsoft for all you bash them, in my opinion look far more organised and professional than the anti-Microsoft people seeking at all costs and turns, to bash and tarnish them. And Microsoft are winning already; just keep checking that MSFT ticker.
Bring the mod points, this is an unpopular opinion I know, but to quote a cliché - "I've got karma to burn"
throw new NoSignatureException();
People are doing that now - not many of them but the numbers will grow.
A nice incremental move forward. Lots of stuff under the hood for SAs (Kerb'd NFS), filesystem based directories (oh, so sweet).
VNC built-in such that when I see a machine on the network, I can bring up it's desktop. Super for around the house. Bring up a remote dual screen and see a really long screen in the VNC window. No muss, no fuss.
Some nice subtle changes in the GUI. Where it especially shines is when using it as a media center. Drop links to network shares of movies and music into your movies and music folders and they show up under frontrow, like magic. Login to resources is auto-magic (keychain).
Drop cover art and it shows up like magic too. DVD rips, mpeg4, what have you. Frontrow's new version makes it so much better. A mini + leopard is Apple TV with a slot loading DVD and an accessible desktop.
Certainly not revolutionary. Nicely revolutionary.
(I got rid of my last XP desktop (AMD 64's) and got an 8 core MacPro when Leopard was released. Switching was like curing a dull toothache that had been causing me pain for years.)
I play MP3's all the time in the background on Vista. I have a duel-core 2.6Ghz Intel with 4G of memory, and as the screen changes... menus popping up, heavy disk activity, you can hear little glitches in playback. Almost like a 1/10 of a second cut in the song.
It's amazing they managed to struggle with all the processor power and memory when Amigas can play MP3's.
I just don't get it.
And now everyone believes XP is the second coming or something. Just hurts your head sometimes...
It took something like Vista to make us appreciate XP. That and people aren't allowing stuff to install on win2k (Photoshop, I'm looking at you).
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
You have failed to demonstrate an actual harm. What precisely is it that Vista does that you are mad about?
It makes a new laptop feel 5 years old?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
No, I run vista on a second partition - I installed it when I thought Crysis was going to be DX10 only. Turns out, if you don't boot it up for a month or so, it comes up in reduced functionality mode, and wants to re-authenticate/authorize itself by calling home. That's totally, completely, and *utterly* unacceptable. I'm not paying MS a monthly fee here - the don't have the right to cripple my shit just because it hasn't been on the internet for a while. Individual applications shouldn't have this power de-facto either. If I pay for something, I should be able to use it - period. So I'm claiming "actual harm" on the GP's behalf. ...There.
Why can't all fpga/microcontroller manufacturers just release free optimizing compilers???
It takes two to tango.
If Vista didn't support DRM, content providers would have less incentive to produce damaged goods.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If you lot are bitching about performance, get the fuck over it. In 6 months, it will be irrelevant, just as the performance differences between 95/98/2k and XP are. I currently run games on vista with no performance problems - if you have a machine built with vista in mind, it's all good.
If you *don't* have a machine built with vista in mind, then why are you shocked and surprised that the user experience sucks? Yes, it's built for new hardware. Given that 90% of the time, all that cpu and memory is sitting idle on most people's machines, it makes sense to try and utilise it for useful purposes - for example, previous versions, search indexing, etc.
Most of that background crap can be turned off if you're really anal about it, but sooner or later you'll (or rather, perhaps one of your users will) do something stupid, like delete a whole heap of crap you don't need or whatever, and wish you hadn't.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Whoa. I'm amazed there hasn't been more of an outcry. That's completely unacceptable. If I put my car in a garage (sorry guys), I don't have to call up Ford. What's next, authorizing each bit of software functionality?
Vista is, clearly, both less reliable and less efficient than XP for a significant proportion of people who have tried it. If it had one bad review, that would be one thing, but the web is full of them and of reports from lab tests confirming it in various contexts, and my personal experience and conversations with friends who have seen it is entirely consistent with those reviews and tests. So I have no problem accepting that Vista is inferior to XP in significant ways.
Now, it may be that it's not really down to the DRM. I find it credible that it is, given the nature of DRM technology, and I guess most people reading this have read the high profile articles with more technical details that claim so. But in any case, it doesn't really matter a whole lot why the performance is worse than XP, just that it is worse. If DRM is getting the blame and MS is suffering bad press because of some FUD here, I'm not exactly full of sympathy: it's not like they have a history of being whiter than white in their objective criticisms of their competitors' offerings, nor like the claims about poor performance/compatibility/reliability aren't essentially all true.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I dislike DRM on philosophical as well as operational grounds. If an operating system incorporates it, even if I don't happen to use that feature, I won't use that operating system.
Please realize that you are not going to talk people into using Vista, PCM2. You delineate all sorts of things that I can do on Vista. There wasn't one thing on your list that I cannot do in XP, in many cases more easily and in most cases faster. So why exactly would I spend the money on the new OS?
So if you are going to accuse anyone of not using Vista (or talking about how Vista sucks) because they are a "fanboy", you may call me a fanboy of consumer choice and freedom.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That was an excellent summary. As in the past, most Windows users won't know what they have gotten themselves into until it is too late. At least for those willing to be educated, word is getting out. I'm tempted to cut and paste your post an e-mail it to a few non-Slashdotters I know.
At least then, in the future when they come whining I can say "You were warned!"
Yes, but times are changing. Even if it's exactly the same thing, people are no longer so excited about the latest and greatest PC. Instead, the PC has become a fairly standard tool that is expected to work a certain way and there's no point throwing thousands of dollars at it just to be "up to date".
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
I have to say that I have only encountered Vista for about ten minutes---and had a DRM problem.
One of my housemates has a Vista laptop, but doesn't own a printer. When tax season came, he needed his W2 form, which was only available as a download from the ADP website. So, he downloaded the PDF, and tried to email it to me. And failed. Vista refused to let him save a local copy so he could email it. When he tried to save it, a little message popped up saying (paraphrasing here,) "The owner of this document has flagged that it contains sensitive information. Windows cannot save a local copy."
Seriously.
I even checked the temp directories---nada. Windows was storing it only in RAM.
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.
When he tried downloading it from gmail, of course, Vista forbade him to save it.
I'm sure Vista can do all the things you list, but when you can't save a copy of your own goddamn W-2 form? Yeah, the DRM really is a problem.
Ok, here are multiple legitimate reasons:
What crime, pray tell, am I committing when I do either of those?
Me. Not the usual "what crime could somebody else commit" question, answer my question: what crime is involved in those two increasingly cheap and easily achievable uses?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.