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Time for a Vista Do-Over?
DigitalDame2 writes "'There's nothing wrong with Vista,' PC Mag editor-in-chief Lance Ulanoff tells a Microsoft rep at this year's CES. 'But you guys have a big problem on your hands. Perception is reality, and the perception is that Vista is a dud.' He goes on to confess that the operating system is too complex and burdened by things people don't need. Plus, Vista sometimes seems so slow. Ulanoff gives four suggestions for a complete Vista makeover, like starting with new code and creating a universal interface table. But will Microsoft really listen?"
Indeed there's nothing wrong with Vista. Except of course the operating system.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
You mean like POSIX?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Every 2-bit nerd thinks he knows what's best for Microsoft, why should Microsoft listen to him? Because he has a blog and people read his blog? Like they don't already have qualified people working on their PR problems.
At any rate, Vista's bad image isn't due to perception, I have Vista Ultimate, running on a machine that can definitely handle it, it runs HORRIBLY, this great PC has become my secondary PC which I now rarely use. I'm not the only one like this, I know a couple other people with the exact same "perception" that they got by actually using the operating system.
You know, Lance, many of us have first-hand experience with the "reality" of Vista. To argue that "perception is reality, and the perception is that Vista is a dud", in the same sentence as "there's nothing wrong with Vista" gives the impression that our perceptions are not based on reality (to put it mildly). To put it not so mildly, you're calling us either deluded, or liars. Is that really what you want to say, Lance?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I see your name is apt. Do you even understand what you just wrote and how it conforms to what has actually happened in Windows releases?
Widely-used software is usually paradigm shifting and has feature sets that people not only want but feel they need. Word 6 made a splash because you could open/edit/save in either Word or WordPerfect format - something the folks in Orem scoffed at. Excel had the ability to use either Lotus or Excel keystroke commands while the 1-2-3 folks were wondering whether mouse support was that important.
I tell folks that if they get a Mac they don't have to buy DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, etc. and they say, "Wow - that's hundreds of dollars of software I don't have to buy." Plus they hear how stable OS X is and that seals the deal.
It's perceptions and paradigm shifts.
And like it or not, Vista was started from scratch and went the wrong way. Monolithic kernels ain't the answer hence MinWin.
The opposite of progress is congress
He wants them to throw away all the backward compatibility that all of the big corporate customers really care about.
And he wants them to sell a version that doesn't play music out of the box.
Is it me or are these both _really stupid_ ideas?
My Journal
Perception is part of reality, but it's not all of it. Regardless of public perception, either Vista will, or it will not, have drivers for some particular video card. It will, or it will not, let you watch a HD movie over a non-HDCP video channel.
The problem with Vista isn't merely perception. It's the fact that in this case, the general public's perception of crappiness is a pretty good predictor of the reality that Vista is going to cause you, as an individual, lots of problems.
All this does not matter.
Labels love it and they are happy with it and its top-to-bottom DRM. This is what MSFT wanted, this is what it got. Now they will happily shovel it down our throats do we like it or not.
It a repeat of the sad story of Media Center Edition of Microcrapware. If you deliberately remove all functionality that users are interested in you should not expect something to sell. Pick up a MCE Remote and look. It is missing "My Videos", "My Music" and any hint of fetching existing content from the hard disk. Yep. Right, We peones are not supposed to have content that has not been approved and blessed for distribution by a label ya know. Only recorded content for ya. Dumb, idiotic, no-seller from day one, but labels are happy.
Microsoft is not doing pesky Apple (or Hauppage) things and offering the users what they actually want. That is good ya know.
Vista is the same, just on a bigger scale. An OS made to order for the labels. No wonder it is crap.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I've been running Vista 64-bit for over a year. No bluescreens, no incompatible hardware, no problems with media files of any type - divx, xvid, mp3, wma, etc. I don't have any intention of going back to XP.
I wonder how many of the "Vista sucks" crows are trying to run it on outdated hardware. Vista does like a lot of memory - I wouldn't touch it without at least 1.5 GB - but this isn't 2001 any more. There should be an expectation that a modern OS will require more RAM and CPU than an OS released 7 years ago. (I have a Pentium D CPU, so I'm nowhere near state of the art, but I have 2 GB RAM).
Oh wait...
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
On the other hand, if MSFT can show that it plug the "digital hole" and tell the media giants that "Windows is the delivery platform for digital content that cant be pirated" then all of them will provide content only in MSFT approved format, and they will achieve a vendor-lock in the media sphere similar to the vendor-lock they got in the corporate world. So the thinking goes in Redmond. So they add layers and layers of stuff, signed drivers, protected video path, protected audio path etc etc. MSFT is trying to sell vista to media companies. Not to the poor dolts who own/buy the PCs.
Some of his suggestions look quaint. "Start all over, and forget 100% backward compatibility!" he urges. Vista has already given up on compatibility. So much of old software, libraries and drivers don't work in Vista. Active X is dead. OpenGL support is being eviscerated to supplant it with MSFT owned rendering schema. Office2005 SP3 just announced it is going to stop importing Office97 files due to "security concerns". (Just when OpenOffice started rendering and saving Office97 format files better than MSFT itself. coincidence?). No. It is a myth that the backward compatibility makes MSFT code slow.
MSFT never had long term focus. It flits about from this latest thing to the next latest thing in a desultory manner. As long as the vendor-lock in Office product keeps pumping money into its coffers it does not have any real incentive to find the managers who manage the projects well and those who build empires under them. Right now the bee in the bonnet of MSFT is to get a lock on entertainment somehow. It compromises everything else for that goal. And that is why Vista sucks as a computing platform.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Computer makers have never switched back to offering earlier versions of Windows before.
Q.E.D.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
"Do an Apple and start with new code. Forget about supporting every piece of hardware and software ever written. For people with major compatibility issues, keep Vista Premium around. You'll be surprised at how many people simply want to move forward."
MS is not Apple. Its software is used far more widely and people depend on it. MS already faces the nightmare of having to support several versions of its OS because if a critical security hole is found in an old windows version MS has to fix or face millions of hijacked PC's and another smear on its reputation.
Vista is in fact the move by MS to go to ONE base, no longer the 9X/NT seperation, one kernel to rule them all! They already broke plenty of legacy applications with it and getting lots of flak because of it. Yes, it might sound smart to just start over but MS really can't do it, because there would be a side effect. IF MS broke backwards support, then when people would finally be forced to move their legacy app from a now unsupported OS, they might CHOOSE a different OS!
By keeping old apps running on their latest OS, they make surepeople have no real incentive to switch their old apps to a different OS. See the recent IE7 and IE8 debate where companies who build their intranet apps for IE6 are faced with having to alter them. Why if you have to pay developer anyway, why not make the app browser neutral and avoid having to do the same for IE9? Force people to chance and they might chance in a direction you do not like.
Anyway, what did Apple really do? They switched their OS9 for one of the oldest OS'es still around? Apple did NOT write new code, they used existing code, existing ANCIENT code.
"Stop trying to make Windows all things to all people. Build it for three core tasks: e-mail, Web browsing, and document creation (which would cover 75 percent or more of the computing world's needs). Sell the OS for $19.99. Then build a dozen or so add-ons that users can bolt on to create the task-oriented OS they want: writing, music, video creation, art work, accounting and business, and so on."
Isn't this exactly what people been bitching about, that MS has to many different versions of its OS? It is already hard enough to get people to cough up once for software, constant upgrades are really going to upset them. It is already a support nightmare because what user really knows which OS version they run let alone what upgrades they installed? BAD IDEA!
"Create a universal interface table for all applications that can be written to by current software manufacturers. It should be small and light, and when you run the new OS, it should automatically collect what it needs from the Microsoft site or the primary vendor site. It would put most of the processing work on the original application and leave the OS safe to act as traffic cop without getting bogged down.
Does this guy even know MS? MS doesn't want third party developers to have an easy time, MS is well known for introducing unpublished API's that its own apps use to make them seem better then third party apps. This idea would totally go against MS business practices. Give a third party an even chance, and why, people might just use that product instead of your own.
"Stop tooting your own horn!"
MS lives by the fact that to a lot of people Computers == Microsoft. It has to toot its own horn very hard to make sure it drowns out anyone who might claim otherwise. They also toot a lot about what their NEXT piece of software is going to do, hoping nobody will be able to hear the spoil sports who point out the software that already does what MS is saying MIGHT happen.
Check up on the history of MS vs OS/2. MS not tooting its own horn would run counter to the way the company has competed.
As for Apple, show me an apple product that does NOT display its logo rather clearly. Everyone knows what an iPod looks like. Apple is just better at making their tooting seem subtle.
On the whole I think t
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, I got so sick of my HP laptop with Vista that I decided to buy a MacBook. Programs weren't running, random pop up windows, security issues, setting up my home wireless, sudden performance drops, UI feature creep, sidebar failures, and more.
I'm serious, it was really bad and with the HP bloatware, the laptop was a nightmare. So, I bought a Mac and I have to tell you, it's been great. There are some minor issues but they really are minor. I'm now drinking the Koolaid.
How to Download YouTube Videos
I started using Vista Home Premium when I bought my new Toshiba laptop, about 5 months ago. At first I was going to just install XP on the system, as I was quite apprehensive about Vista's compatibility issues with much of the software I need to use day to day. But, as an IT contractor, I knew I would have to start supporting Vista sooner or later, so I took the plunge.
I also expected that the first thing I would do is turn off all of Vista's "pretty" including Aero, and make it look as much as 9x/2k as possible. That's what I'd done with XP (Blue...ugh!) and I figured Microsoft's latest UI-gloss would be the same. Based on what the media had told me, I thought the DRM would be horribly intrusive, the security ever-present and annoying, but useless.
Ehm... whoops! I was a bit surprised. Vista runs quite well on this new but definitely not top-end laptop. It's a bit slow to fall into sleep mode or wake up, but not bad considering the 2GB of ram it has to deal with every time I close the lid. Bootup isn't too slow, and although shutdown is a bit laggy, I shut the system down rarely so that's not much of an issue.
As for DRM... what DRM? I have MP3 files, DivX, MPEG-video, watch DVDs and listen to (and rip) CDs quite often, and have not had it bother me yet. I don't use the frankly horrific Windows Media Player or it's associated store, nor do I use iTunes. Using either of those will of course result in DRM and associated DRM-related issues, but that's YOUR problem, not mine. My CD-quality ripped MP3 files have no DRM, thank you very much.
The security screen that darkens the window when you are installing, uninstalling, updating, changing, or even just copying files into the Program Files directory is a bit overused, but the implementation is great- as far as I can tell, it does a system "stop" and holds everything until you make a decision, possibly stopping malware from auto-installing as easily as in the past. I wish I could select when I want it to happen more specifically then "on" or "off" but maybe in a future patch that'll happen. "Run as Administrator" is a bit vexing in that you can't log in as "Administrator" (AKA root) but you can make shortcuts automatically run specific programs as administrator (Netstumbler requires this as it needs low-level access to the wireless NIC).
The wireless and network connection screens take a little getting used to, as they are new since XP, but the ease-of-use and controllability are still present, and I do prefer it a great deal over Apple's over-simplified system.
Oh, and Aero? Shiney! I actually rather enjoy the transparencies, and most of the transitions are quite unobtrusive. The new start menu is nice in some ways, although I wish it responded faster to opening folders, which is perhaps more an issue with the laptops slow drive speed. Making the task bar 2 level tall works very well, and the start icon expands slightly to fill it's area better.
My major annoyances have mostly to do with the aformentioned wireless connectivity, and with IE7. For some reason, when I load media-rich websites sometimes that window will crash. This doesn't happen on any of the other Vista or XP systems I run IE7 on, so it may be a driver issue. The wireless has problems connecting to open APs sometimes, and for some vague reason doesn't like the occaisonal brand of AP (SonicWall seems to be the worst). I think both of these issues will be fixed shortly, and neither are hugely problematic for me.
Overall, I rather like Vista, for all of it's shortcomings. I wish I had it installed on a powerful-enough system to play games on, though. DirectX 10, anyone? I AM looking forward to Windows 7 though, if Microsoft pulls off most of what it wants to do for that OS, it should be quite the system.
To be more exact, it's not the kernel itself that's so bloated, but the multiple layers around it to provide a 'basic' operating system, API's for userland apps to run, DRM management in sound and video subsystems, probably lots of code to make truly important software to run (like they did various other times),
Dependency hell? =>
I remember the cries "OH no! Windows sux because of running as an administrator. That's why we have virii!". Now we're stuck with annoying popups. If I want to perform a "ipconfig /release", I have to create a shortcut to cmd, right-click and "run as Administrator" to be able to do that task.
"Oh no! Windows users are too stupid to protect themselves from hackers and spyware!", so now we have by default this "spyware remover", running on the background, doing most of the time nothing but hogging up memory.
"But they're so stupid, they install everything in their email attachments! YOu cannot trust the internets!", so now I have to "allow" whenever I click a program installation.
After all the criticism, most "features implemented", you now say "yeah, that's cool. But it was better before, when I had all these remarks."
I dislike working with Vista, it's counterproductive, when it should be more productive, and makes me feel less in control of what's going on in my PC; if something hangs, I haven't gotten the slightest clue. "Which obscure process now is behaving badly? Just when I reboot I get a "check for a sollution online", so halfly sell my soul to MS raping my bandwidth sending the dumpfiles to get a "no currently known sollution.".
The seem to have listened to all this whining, and those whining the hardest seem to have been the most hardcore PC user; "oh no, I don't like to spend all this time in managing my PC! Do it for me!" But when they do "ANTI TRUST!" or whatever they come up with. Pounding their chest to distinguish themselves from the "illiterate computer users who need to be protected for themselves on the internets", yet ending up with the same sollution being frustrated they've gotten what they asked for.
In the end, it's still Microsoft. Their implementations will still suck, they'll still have talented people -wherever you can see that or not- who are motivated in what they do (I cannot believe a programmer or project manager is thinking how to fuck you over best, or make the most money. They are motivated to "make a difference", just like many people inhere.)
And yes, most of their products suck, I don't like their marketting strategy. That doesn't change the fact there are geeks working there.
Vista was marketted as "the built from scratch", but it also required to exceed the expectations of a "next generation OS". You can't start over with "DOS Aero" and expect people to wait another 10 years for Web 2.0-like GUI.
Stop whining, if you want perfect software, play Duke Nukem Forever. It's been perfect for years nowThank god for opensource.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Of course MS isn't going to listen to anyone asking them to rewrite an OS from scratch, when they just spent nearly a decade doing so. That's absurd. Now some suckers have participated and provided feedback for their public beta... cough, I mean *release*, they're going to tweak things here and there, maybe rewrite some major problem areas, strip out some of the bloat, and release their next OS.
Anyone else notice where their programming languages are going? Extensibility, re-usability, modularity, and *really* good library support... we're finally seeing an effective implementation of what object oriented programming claimed to be all along. I would not be surprised then, to see that they've taken the same approach with their operating system design.
Their next OS will be better, and though we might complain, most of us will end up with it running on our machines. And you know, after a few years we might actually start to like it. That's my prediction.
My first thought on seeing the title (without reading the post or article) was "I'm sure the Edsel team would have liked a do-over also." After reading the wikipedia article on Edsel & the parent Vista post, I wonder if there are parallels that could be drawn between the failures (design flaws, misalignment with market needs, timing, perception/buzz, etc). Both projects were very long, complex & represented significant investments with disappointing payoffs.
If someone told me I needed "new code" I would be sure I was listening to an idiot. What "new code" would you like? Sheesh......
Dear Large Advertsing client, I Lance do love your products, and i hate it when people say your product is rubbish. Apple wont spend as much, and that Penguin is mean.
Steve Please Please don't throw that a chair at me, but if you only made a few changes i could tell people that your products are the greatest yet and people who use Vista wont laugh at me like they are currently doing.
I think it is best that i call all users of Vista 'retarded' and my readership too since they do not see the amazing things i see in it. Thus I retain my journalistic integrity and you also win because i cannot never ever upset you.
Please send me a large cash sum, Love and kisses your bestest publisher friend in publishing.
Love Lance
I think much of the "Vista failure" is the herd mentality. People raved and raved about the Blair Witch Project. Was it really a good movie? I hated it, and I think most people looking back today hate it. But everyone was agreeing with everyone else, because they wanted to be part of a group.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Quantifying perception -- that's where things get squirrely. True, gratuitous changes can give bad first impressions, but Vista's more serious problems do nothing to dispel those impressions.
Take a statement like "Vista is slow." There is no single thing that is "speed" when it comes to operating systems. Vista isn't
"slow" in the sense of failing to do many units of computational work per unit time on average. It's "slow" in the sense that you can't rely upon it to respond to input in a consistent amount of time. Serious work has a rhythm to it; you can adapt yourself to a tool that is slow, but effective, but you can't to a tool that doesn't behave in exactly the same way every single time you use it. Using Vista is like dancing with a partner who has a lot of fancy moves, but can't hear the music.
Most of Vista's faults you can adapt to, like it's unnecessarily complicated and cluttered file dialog box. But you can't adjust to the fact that it really needs far more memory than its claimed minimum if you don't want to deal with a user interface that freezes every so often because of swapping. I know swapping is the case because I'm writing this on a laptop with 2GB of RAM that is almost unbearable to use without 2GB of ReadyBoost flash. I'm running pretty much the same workload as was acceptable under 1GB on XP or Linux but as I type this, I can see the access light on the flash drive almost continually blinking as the OS goes for cached pages.
Microsoft probably could make Vista a viable platform if they simply made 4GB the minimum required RAM. Or if they could make it possible to use Vista with the rated minimum RAM requirements. I had an open mind, because people always complain when Microsoft changes things, excepting maybe Windows 2000 where they were ready to try anything after the stability nightmare that was NT 4. And maybe Windows 7 will be that kind of improvement over Vista. But for now I can say I started with an expectation that Vista would be at least OK once I got to use it, but after almost a year I have to say it's the first operating system I've ever used whose performance is a serious problem for my productivity. These are greatly alleviated by ReadyBoost, but even so it's a relief to boot into Linux and not feel like I'm constantly fighting the operating system. In fact, I've begun to boot into Linux and do my work in an XP virtual machine, which feels faster than running the same user tasks directly on Vista.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I think Vista really did get a bad rap. I've been using it for a year now. I believe one of the major sources of complaints was early driver support. Even some big name companies, like NVidia, had really shitty drivers at first. This is not really an issue any more.
The other major complaint, UAC, really ceases to be a problem once the system is configured. Sure, when you first set it up, you get a lot of pop-ups when trying to change settings, but once things are pretty much the way you want them, you rarely see a UAC pop-up anymore. About the only time I see them is when installing a new program.
Indeed - he did misuse that term, but phrased like: "Vista's kernel is monolithic" it seems quite accurate...
:P
...I think it's quite reasonable to describe the Vista kernel (when loaded in memory) as a "giant black box that drives primates into a murderous rage."
(With apologies to Kubrick and Clarke)
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Linux is only cheaper if your time is worthless.
Okay, I'll bite.
Linux is only FREE if your time is worthless. With some distros like Ubuntu, you can install faster and easier than you can with XP, and still use the computer while it's working. So, not only is the software free, but it uses less of your precious time to install it.
I can't give you evidence I guess, but just logic should do it.
::slap:: ). Ok, that last one is a bit harder to avoid...guess I've been lucky so far.
UAC will pop whenever you install anything through Windows Installer (regardless of what it installs), access anything admin-only (like changing any system-wide settings), and any files that your user isn't given access to (and thus require admin priviledge).
If you're an idiot who work on the C drive at all time, instead of in C:\User\(YourUserName), its unbearable: it will popup constantly.
Otherwise, it will pop whenever there's a windows update to install, whenever you install software through Windows Installer, or in Program Files, and whenever you ctrl+alt+delete and choose to see "process by all users", or any equivalent system-wide task.
Thats it. So when I develop with IIS, I make sure the web site isn't in C:\wwwroot, but is in my user's directory. I put all my files there. And I don't use software made by idiots (read: games that put save files in the root directory instead of in your user folder...COME ON developers
That final point is really what pushes things to "either extreme". If you use software that constantly write to their executing directory, it gets very troublesome. Imagine in Linux if a software did that. You'd have to run it as root or give yourself special priviledge all over the place. Microsoft has been trying to tell those morons to stop doing that since the dawn of times, and they still do... fact remain, its where UAC succeeds or break: you have a lot of poorly written software, UAC will pop constantly. You don't have such software, you'll only see it once or twice a week.
In the end, you can just turn it off though.
If you're one of us old farts with kids, you'll need a Win or Mac installation to edit your home movies. I like Ubuntu, but I'm not ready to wipe out my Mac drive just yet :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
"...Won't get fooled again."
These are the words of our Dear Leader and they apply just as well to Microsoft Windows Vista. It's not going to be my job to "give Vista another try" even if MS gives it a complete makeover. I'm gonna need a fair amount of greasing up before I lay out my money for a new Microsoft OS. Maybe dinner and a movie. Some flowers would be nice. Definitely, a deep price reduction.
"SP2"?? What, do I look like I just came in on the turnip truck? Like I just came down with the rain this morning?
Tell you what, Microsoft: You come up with an OS that outperforms XP Pro SP2, has some useful new features, is efficient, compatible, maybe even costs less, and then blow me, and I'll give your new OS a try. How's that sound?
I mean, I don't want to sound bitter or anything. I'm willing to let bygones be bygones.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Vista home premium includes DVD burning software, picture management software, music tools, backup software, etc.
Re: 2) Both Windows 2000 and XP had problems with driver availability at the start. Also with their resource hunger compared to the predecessor. But I cannot remember as much complaints about user interface (UAC?) and backwards compatibility as with Vista.
Re: 3) There are many reports (admittedly without statistics) of users disliking Vista enough to remove it and install XP instead. This is something I heard last in connection with WinME, which people dumped in favor of Win98.
Re: 4) True, and it will be interesting to see how the numbers change when SP1 is out. At that point, any parallels to Win ME will break down:
Windows 2000 was the best way to upgrade from Win ME. Microsoft gave up the Win9x line soon after, introducing XP Home instead. This time, there is no such architecture switch in sight (I assume Windows 7 will take a few more years and won't be released in 2009).
So I think Vista SP1 will make or break Vista in the business world. If Microsoft gets it right, they will get to enjoy their dominant position for a few more years. If it doesn't make much of a difference, I expect more news like this: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/30/2341206&from=rss (French police moving to Linux)
C - the footgun of programming languages
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been supporting and administering Microsoft networks for over a decade now. With every new Microsoft operating system release I can think of (except Windows ME) there have been a few features that could sell the operating system.
This time, with Vista, there are none. I don't really know what Microsoft spent 5 years developing, but from a user's perspective, there isn't much reason to buy Vista.
I've got Vista in the lab right now, and I can't really justify the expense to start moving our network (a mix of machines, some approaching 5 years old) to Vista.
That's Vista's real problem.
-ted
Windows 7 is the working title for Vista's successor. Microsoft has now released the official name of their new operating system. May I present to you Windows Mulligan.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Vista is in fact the move by MS to go to ONE base, no longer the 9X/NT seperation
Wasn't that XP? The last OS to use the 9x kernel was windows ME, 8 years ago.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was looking to buy a Media Center recently. Microsoft's view of the way "TV" should be sucks. Every Media Center PC I looked at had a large case, loud fan, and hugely complicated remote control or worse, a wireless keyboard.
Great for geeks, horrible for the rest of the people living in my house.
I bought an Apple TV, and I couldn't be happier. Sure, it doesn't record live TV, but for $9.00/month I get an HD DVR from my cable company.
I put all my DVDs, music, and photos on the Apple TV, and it is easily navigated with a simple remote.
Microsoft just doesn't get it. They need to fire their product designers and hire some guys that think like normal humans do.
-ted
I was talking about user applications. You speak of Postgres, so the MS equivalent is SQL Server. Does it do that? -YES-, it does. It creates a COUPLE of roles for various features, assign them to the required users, and it works fine. It indeed writes to the app's directory, and you won't see a popup aside during install. Those are services though. "You" aren't running Postgres: the system is. It runs even if you log off.
Applications that you use directly though? They write to your home directory. Your personal KDE/Gnome/whatever user settings aren't in the same directory as the libs, are they? Well, a lot of stupid windows software written by wannabes do that, and it will make you see UAC.
OS X uses the Mach kernel, a project which didn't start until 1985. NeXT was founded in 1985, so NeXTstep is about the same age. The imaging layer in OS X is entirely new and based on PDF, because they didn't want to reuse the licensed NeXTstep Display PostScript from Adobe. Also entirely new are Core Image, Core Data, Core Image, Bonjour, and so on. So other than the core BSD tools, most of OS X dates from the late 80s at the earliest.
Sure, it implements APIs that date back to v7 Unix. But then, Windows Vista implements APIs that date back to 86-DOS aka QDOS in 1981.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Starting over is sometimes a good thing. When I made the break from the MSDOS-based Windows to NT oh-so-many years ago, it was pretty much a clean break. I had a lot of old software that no longer worked, but NT was stable and allowed me to do so much more. It was a significant change in platform, a lot of drivers just didn't exist (so I had to be choosy about hardware), and there was a learning curve involved-- but once I figured out the basics, I found the losses to be far outweighed by the gains, and after the first week or two (during which I started wondering what I'd gotten myself into and if I should just forget about it and reinstall Win95), I never looked back.
Fast forward a few years, I repeated that process with Linux after suffering through one XP-reactivation call too many (I change & upgrade hardware frequently, so sue me! Oh, wait...please don't!). I've been on Kubuntu for going on two years now, and haven't looked back. The bad taste from the reactivations caused me not to even look back during the first week off Windows. That, and Wine runs many Windows applications better than *real* Windows did, so there really wasn't any problem there.
So what does this have to do with Vista? I think Microsoft made a huge mistake in their approach. They failed at everything in regards to this project. If they wanted a revolution, they should've basically started over from scratch, and left the end users with choices or options to bridge the chasm. By clinging to some legacy functionality, they hobbled the developers, and I think we've all heard how poorly-implemented the backwards compatibility is despite their efforts. Vista wasn't a matter of having one's cake and eating it too, as they tried to hawk it, it was more of a case of dropping your cake on the ground and having a filthy cake you wouldn't want to eat anyway. I've used Vista, I've supported end users who use it, and I've experienced firsthand how unremarkable, bloated, and annoying it is, despite the gimmicks. Microsoft may have gotten somewhere if only they'd revisited the NT development model, reinvented their flagship OS technology, and put a team of developers on making a compatibility layer like Wine to allow users to run older applications. Vista really just seems like XP with some new gimmicks and security measures cobbled-on, and a whole lot of marketing hype. It's apropos to draw parallels between Vista and ME, because ME had basically all of the same attributes and was a failure for the same reasons.
I think that vista is good...
*Ducks*
But I think they need to remove most of the features in the initial install but include the option to install those features later. Or at the very least an option to select what features to install when first installing the OS from the disk. With these improvements in the installer than maybe the vista would seem faster because there are less features.
Does this mean they'll come out with an edition called Windows Vista Mulligan?
It will probably include not only gluttony (bloat), sloth (crappy performance), envy (poorly reimplemented stolen ideas), pride (disregard for customer satisfaction), and greed (exorbitant prices), but also wrath!
I just hope it also comes with lust (a good collection of pr0n).
I have a media center. Using Microsoft components. But running Linux.
One huge box tucked away in the loft with storage (2TB and counting). Diskless clients hanging off it. No noise. No heat. A P3 with a AGP Nvidia can easily drive A 1366x768 Screen (most common size in HD-ready EU TVs in the 22-30in zone). For a smaller screen you can even get away with a factory made thin client. Cost - around 120 quid per client, 400 quid for the storage.
Works a treat. Video and Music the way I want it at the touch of a remote. No pesky ads, no stupid DVD menus, no mandatory previews, no 20 minutes searching through the DVD collection for something to watch. All with off the shelf stuff from Debian (using the multimedia apt store). I wrote all in all around 10 lines to fix for various sillies here and there to get it working.
All of that at around 10% of the cost of a branded MCE PC system. And with 10 times the capability.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/