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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.
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 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 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."
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.
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!"
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.