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158 Pages of Microsoft's Dirty Laundry
KrispyRasher writes "Even internally, Microsoft couldn't agree on what the base requirements to run Vista were, but that didn't stop it from inaccurately promoting the OS as running on some hardware. 158 pages of Microsoft internal emails reveal scandalous truths about the squabbles that took place in the lead up to Vista's launch."
Microsoft execs on Vista problems is an excellent summary of the affair so far.
This class action suit isn't looking too good for Microsoft, I would say (though I'm not a lawyer, fortunately)
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
A VP in Microsoft buys a Sony laptop with 915 graphics and a Brother multifunction printer? I've suggested elsewhere on these pages that Microsoft management may not always be of the same high quality as their scientific and engineering staff, but two such misjudgements from one exec is worrying. Especially as one assumes that the guy didn't do it for lack of cash.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Of course the truth was stretched by M$. I like the part where they favor their buddies at Intel and say Vista runs well on low end chips, just to help an investor report.
The larger problem is even if you have the next thing to a super computer, Vista is still Vista. Doing mysterious DRM checks while copying files at a rate that would embarrass a TRS-80 Model 1, and all of the other issues of driver incomparability.
Vista is still prone to viruses and Trojans in no small part because M$ still lets it run as root and not need physical password entry to install or run a program.
Before any of the M$ fanbois out here start modding this down, go download the latest Ubuntu, install it on your "Vista Capable Machine" , try using it for a while, then honestly look and see if it isn't superior for desktop use than Vista.
I think you will be surprised.
Or, for those that think you have to pay for software in order for it to work, go over to an Apple store and try OS X.
After doing either of those 2 things, then see if you can come up with some reason, other than monopolistic domination and pre-installation as a reason that anyone would want Vista.
I am glad to say that Vista really is the new Edsel.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Although I'm not a MSFT fanboi, I can see how defining compatibility is not easy. Although a given OS certainly will not run on ancient hardware or hardware lacking key features, the required MB of RAM, GB of disk, and GHz of CPU are all subjective requirements once the hardware is above some minimum spec. I know that I've run OSes on hardware that were below the recommended spec and found them quite usable (for my purposes). Add the fact that the company must set the required hardware spec before finishing the OS and its no wonder that MSFT picked a spec that some find unbearable.
I'm not surprised by the internal squabbles or that the company would pick a spec that's lower than what some engineers argued for.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
*for email. Seriously, it's M$ promising the lowest compatability of a product to people who don't know any better and are expecting premier performance when upgrading to Vista.. Way to piss off your entire customer base.
...is the discussion over the miserable driver situation. They eventually conclude that IHVs didn't expect them to ever ship Vista, and that the IHVs also didn't trust Microsoft enough to work hard at getting their drivers working on the Vista betas because they expected subsequent changes to Vista that would break the drivers and negate all the effort.
These guys honestly seem perplexed that the IHVs don't trust Microsoft. I find that utterly hilarious.
on an 8 core 6.5 with 12 gig of ram.
yawn boring but the phrase 'create vista buzz' and the end made me chuckle - yeah you did that alright although I suspect this was not the buzz you were looking for. If I may be so bold as to offer some advice here, during the planning for Vista's successor make sure the #1 item is 'lean and fast', let's get to where Windows is the OS and not trying to be everything to everyone. ok? When you strip all the crap off XP SP2 rocks, Vista is a hard place to get be, so people are stuck between XP rocks and vista hard place. cheers!
A lot of things are going wrong for Microsoft right now...
- "Vista Ready" is starting to mean a huge liability
- The EU seems determined to make Microsoft stick to the rules
- MS's OOXML effort is running into real resistance
- Apple keeps taking more and more of the desktop and laptop market
- The EEE PC has finally turned Linux into a mainstream "feature"
- Trying to buy Yahoo has made MS look really weak in Internet services
- Its "we'll sue Linux for patent infringement" FUD is convincing no-one
- It's being sued persistently by patent trolls in the USA
I'm just wondering if 2008 will be the year that sees Microsoft humbled by the market and its own inability to deliver products people actually *want* to use.
A whole lot of people are going to sing and dance in the streets if things do go badly wrong for Microsoft. They don't have a lot of friends left, unless they're willing to buy them.
My blog
What Microsoft feared most about Google has become true now: The application stack has shifted up, and now the web browser has become the new OS. No one cares about Vista because no one needs a new OS anymore. All they care about is getting their news and email, IM'ing and watching youtube. Flash and AJAX have completely supplanted the OS.
The only reason why you need a new OS is for new features, but frankly, no one needs them. The only reason why people use an OS these days is to interact with local files, but the vast majority of people only care about 2 types of files: MP3s and digital photos. Even Word documents are becoming marginalized now. So what's the point of a desktop search for newer kids these days, when they stick everything online now?
Because of the lack of importance of new OS features, that's why other OSes like Mac OS are gaining steam, because Windows isn't as essential as it was 10 years ago. It's a perfect storm of good for Apple, they are becoming ever-increasingly "cooler", and the need for Windows is diminishing, so people can still get their email and watch youtube and still get the same experience. This is also why everyone is still using XP, a 7 year old OS, without any complaints. No one cares, and it scares Microsoft to death.
They shit the bed in their attempt to make Vista relevant and they lost their one-and-only chance. I'm sure Vista will be adopted eventually, but it will probably take another 5 years because it is as popular as XP is now.
And how many folks looked at this vague chart and thought well, I need to view photos which the chart says I can't with Home Basic and I want to protect hardware which I need the "Ultimate". I don't have the money for it so screw it.
I thought the same thing. That the home basic can't burn CDs, DVDs or view movies and pictures. But hey, I guess I'm stupid for not assuming that Windows can't do those things on all releases. (Like a few of you did when Vista first came out and I brought up this point. I wrote it off to Microsoft employees trolling this site.)
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I'm shocked. Headline says 185, summary says 158. At first I thought "stupid /. editors", but then I went to see the article (yes, I'm new here) and they have both numbers, too! So, for once, the headline/summary is actually right.
Although we still don't know what the actual number is.
Well, the PDF is in the article, and it's not a quantic one: 158 pages.
if no one cares about Vista how come theres a class action lawsuit in progress?
That would require at least a few caring about the Vista they bought.
Been reading the pdf the past days, and altough it seems as if there was many sensible voices over at microsoft, they had to much of a momentum forward, making it hard to change directions midcourse. it's really a pain reading those letters knowing what vista ended up at. I'm just hoping to find a reference like "this is ME all over again" somewhere in those letters, would have been so nice to hear that from the horses mouth :)
and btw: it's 158 pages, not 185.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
I'm sure Vista will be adopted eventually, but it will probably take another 5 years because it (Vista) is as popular as XP is now.
I would wager that XP is about 10 times as popular as Vista now... at the very least. Application (in)compatibility is the single biggest problem for corporates, while for home users... as you said, Vista brings nothing new since a browser and Flash is all that home users need. I think Vista will take much more than 5 years to get adopted... by which time its successor should hopefully mkae it ME-II.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The vast majority of people running Vista arn't people who wanted it and paid to "upgrade" to it - they are people who bought new PCs that happened to come with it installed. They have every right to complain if it runs like crap.
Luckiliy some PC vendors, such as Dell, are now offering XP as an alternative to Vista, and the knowledge that Vista is a large steaming turd is quite widespread.
Microsoft is always in something of a no-win position when it comes to minimum system requirements. If it specifies huge hardware needs, then the opportunity to sell upgrades is reduced since most existing PCs can't handle the new version. If it sets a minimal baseline platform, then it's difficult (though arguably not impossible) to add any features that make upgrading worth the hassle and risk.
It would have been easy to add features to make Vista worth buying: make it modular, make it simpler, make it more rather than less reliable, and make the features that reduce Windows security optional, and look at what your best competitors were doing.
* Make the HTML control optional, rewrite the control panel applets and other shell components that need it to work without it, and change the tight binding between rendering and access control. Provide a "legacy" wrapper for it so that old programs can use the insecure API, but make THAT optional as well.
* Make the DRM optional. Vista without DRM would still use the old XP drivers and remain compatible with XP, but wouldn't have the components to run the latest encrypted media, so give us the option... Basic Vista or Video Vista. If you don't install Windows Media Player, you get WMP 2.0 and a WMV3 codec so you can play most video, but if you want to play HD-DVD you need to take on the full thing.
* Bundle Interix with ALL versions of Vista. They could call it "A better UNIX than Linux".
* Remove the crippling in Terminal Server, allow multiuser use over networks. If you can't afford to upgrade all your computers to Vista you can use the old ones as terminals to your Windows Home Server.
* Bundle Visual Studio, in the package, the way Apple bundles XCode and all free UNIXes bundle their compilers. Windows is the last hold out of the horror of the '80s... the compiler-less OS.
These might not sell to home users, but it would sell to business, and don't forget that what got Windows into the home for a lot of people was the fact that they were using it at the office.
But this would all be diametrically opposed to Microsoft's "we know better than you what you want, and that's *our* OS, not yours" policies. Hell, even Apple gave up on the idea of unbundling access to UNIX from Rhapsody, and if it's not too scary for APPLE users it's not too scary for Windows.
The folks in the class action lawsuit do not care about Vista. They are willing participants because they in/voluntarily paid for a POS software. Heck I am guessing many of them may not be even on the lawsuit for money (like me) - but just to score a moral/physiological victory for the pain they suffered for owning a system with Vista on it.
No Sig for you.!
As much as I want to believe how this "cloud computing" has supplanted the local one, it's not the case. Online services are in their infancy.
Okay, maybe email, but most of the stuff that deals with productivity is very much a client-side affair. Have you tried editing a picture in an ajax-y environment? It's a mess. The bandwidth isn't there and the browsers are retrofitted to perform functions no one really anticipated.
Audio/Video editing, image manipulation, or tasks with large files will keep the local computing relevant for a long time.
Contrary to popular belief, people don't love XP. It's just Vista was such a terrible upgrade that many came to appreciate their old OS.
Microsoft's problem was ambition. They looked at Apple innovations and kept moving the goalposts with every OSX release until they had a monster of an OS that beat the shit out of OSX... on paper. When it came time to implement it, Microsoft scrapped most good features (WinFS, etc) to make the release.
They let the perfect become the enemy of the good. As a web developer I am confronted with this with every project - should I upload a moderately buggy product and then make incremental changes or get stuck in first draft hell for the sake of having a perfect product from day one? The former is a more productive approach and results in a better overall output.
There was talk of some magical OS Microsoft was going to release back in 2003, named XP Reloaded. I don't know whether this was real or not, but they should have done this and refined the OS instead of sitting on their asses for half a decade.
"Upgrade" implies that the new version is significantly better.
Vista is
-worse in performance
-maybe better in security (UAC is a nice try, but reportedly many people just switch it off because it is too annoying)
-has DX10 (whatever you think about it...)
-has more eyecandy if Aero is available
By pushing a version without Aero at all, Microsoft have thrown away (for that version) one of the two things thing that would immediately signal "Hey, I am new and shiny". That sort of mistake is quite untypical for them. It would not be the first time that Microsoft sells something that looks good and later turns out to be an unreliable POS. But selling something without "bells and whistles" factor is new for them.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The thread on this subject the other day had an good comment from a former MS employee. Vista works well if you do the following
1. Turn of Aero
2. Switch to Classic mode/view whatever it is called (makes it look like Windows 2000)
3. Go into System properties and set to optimize for best performance.
A friend tried it on two systems (one is a new quad-core) and is much happier now. So where does that get you? Basically, system that looks like Windows 2000, performs like XP, and has the underneath the cover features of Vista like "enhanced" security, searching, etc.
I haven't tried Vista yet because of the lackluster performance and no compelling reasons to run it. Knowing it can be setup to run faster is nice but I still can't see anyone spending money on Vista just to turn off all of the eye candy.
I'll stick with XP at work and Ubuntu & XP at home for now.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
Perhaps if Bill Gates was fully in command at Microsoft this would not have happnened. It seems that Apple floundered when Steve Jobs was absent, and his return helped to restore Apple. Maybe Microsoft needs Bill back and doing what he did best, act as a totalitarian dictator to keep warring factions on track.
She continued, "Please give this some consideration; it would be a lot less costly to do the right thing for the customer than to spend dollars on the back end trying to fix the problem." That snippet was really insightful. Shit, Microsoft *should* have made those two stickers (Vista Home Capable and Vista Others). When they announced that there would be 6 different versions of Vista everybody *knew* it would bring problems...
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
> Dell planned to offer only some versions of Vista, arguing that too
> many options would confuse consumers.
> Different countries will see different prices and options (and then
> presumably get confused when they go online trying to fix their first
> round of Vista problems and can't work out which bug belongs to which
> release)
DUDE!!! WHICH DISTRO OF VISTA ARE YOU USING???
They all suck, man.
The class action lawsuit is from people who bought a new PC (hence the "Vista Capable" claim) with Vista. What they wanted was a new PC, not Vista in particular. Vista was probably given very little consideration other than "the newest version of Windows? Sure, sounds good".
Then they got it home and found how bad it runs. Much worse than their last, less powerful PC.
So it's not really so much about them caring that Vista runs like crap, it's them caring that their PC that they just bought runs like crap.
Really, Vista is the biggest "meh" in computer history.
This is what happens when the worlds largest / most successful PC software engineering firm shitfts its primary focus from developers to advertisers(ing). No mercy for the devil
As opposed to a $2100 email machine with aero?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is Slashdot. You get modded up for mocking Microsoft and BSD and modded down for mocking Linux.
You will get flamed AND modded into oblivion if you as much as critisize Apple. And I really don't want to find out what would happen to you if would start mocking Apple. I never EVER heard from those guys again.
Unfortunately for me, I am a gamer. Serious PC gaming is still pretty much stuck on the windows platform. They tried pushing us to Vista with DX10 and when they EoL XP, they will have succeeded. I, for one, will be taking a closer look at Wine on my Ubuntu partition. I just hope it really works as described. Does any one know of any other linux gaming solutions? I suppose I do still have an itch for nethack every once in a while.
It's even funnier than stated.
A year ago a friend and I bought near-identical low-end laptops: Celeron single-core 1.6 CPUs, Intel 945 graphics, etc - one Acer (mine) and one Toshiba. These were $400 Best-Buy-sale-o-the-week critters. Both shipped originally with Vista Home Basic. We set them up with 1gig memory each (533) - they had shipped with 512 and Vista was utterly unusable.
At 1gig we tested both with MS-Office 2003. He still had Vista. I had Ubuntu Feisty 7.04, Innotek Virtualbox 1.52 I believe it was, and Windows XP running as a virtual machine with 512megs of it's own RAM leaving 512 for Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu/XP mutant combo spanked the Vista box - severely - in everything but boot time as my rig had to boot two OSes in succession.
At that time getting Office '03 to work in Wine was a no-go. It's at least possible now I've heard, and that might be even faster. But regardless, Vista with one gig should have been able to keep up with virtualized XP running in 512...it wasn't even close.
Need I mention that I rapidly converted my bud to Ubuntu/XP?
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Personally, I'll probably never run Vista (and I'm running XP, BSD, OSX, Linux, and Solaris on occasion), if anything I'll skip it like the whole ME fiasco and wait for something that isn't made to fill a void between new technologies. However, sooner or later, this issue is going to affect me at work when our aging Dell desktops are starting to drop at about the same time I can no longer get XP preinstalled. My gut says buy OEM XP 10 packs and build 10 white boxes at volume cost for 10 cases, motherboards, etc... We only have about 10 desktops, but that seems to be the first discount tier for software and hardware. Then again, maybe it's just cheaper to save my time and buy preinstalled Vista if it'll play nicely with Samba(4 by then) and the 5 applications we actually use.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Check out page 47 of the PDF. There's a pretty interesting table showing the percentage of crashes attributed to each graphics vendor. Nvidia is way out front, with 25% compared to less than 10% for ATI.
Search first, ask questions later.
This is one of the most efficient and well stated comments I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Bravo for hitting the nail directly on the head.
What they SHOULD have done (and IMHO,could still do,if they had a brain) is release a "Windows 200X Business edition" which would be an updated Win2K Pro with even more group policy management.And then for the home user an "XP Reloaded" which would have a new look,and maybe a little better user switching for running as a non-admin. This would let them keep their customers while giving them time for "Win 7" to be built from the ground up properly. And as we saw from WinME,if they kill it quick,and replace it with something usable,most folks will stick with what they know.
But I have a feeling "Monkey Boy" Ballmer would rather be hit by a bus than admit they screwed the pooch. Which of course,will be good for Apple and Linux,as more folks get forced onto machines that are too underpowered to run vista as they shoot themselves in the foot by EOL'ing XP when Vista is so disliked. I feel that Linux will take the low end with sub $400 laptops and sub $300 desktops,while Apple will continue to grow with those that don't mind spending the money for a fast machine. And with OOXML in trouble,that makes it not a good time to be a softie.Meanwhile I'll avoid the stink of Vista by running Xandros on my laptop and XP on my gaming rig.But as always my 02c,YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I thought I would get a few years of use out of my username as XP was pretty new on the scene when I inexplicably 'lost' my old /. account and decided to create a new one - Had no idea that after all this time (6 years now?) XP would still be the OS I have to admin on a daily basis and that Windows 8 will probably come to fruition before that drastically changes.
;) And my friends mostly have thinkpads that I have been installing ubuntu on to save them from viruses and malware problems.
Me? Ive been an Apple user since 1999 - bought stock when they were 'beleaguered' and held on through all the splits
MS is falling on hard times fast - but of course I dont count them out by any stretch.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Wouldn't you expect someone like that to know who the most active driver developers were for his platform, or to know about the market shares of different printer makers? I bet a Ford exec doesn't expect a non-franchise garage to be able to get the diagnostics off his 2008 model.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sorry it was a typo, I meant to say it will probably take another 5 years before it is as popular as XP is now. In terms of popularity, I also meant "widespread" as opposed to "well liked".
There was talk of some magical OS Microsoft was going to release back in 2003, named XP Reloaded.
Yeah, it was released, it's called Windows Server 2003. It is everything Windows XP should have been...games run great, audio / graphic production works great and seems to 'never' crash.
The Windows Vista CapAble Lawsuit! Whinners! A few of you may have read the stories about several groups of whinny mormons attempting to initiate a class action lawsuit against us for deceptive advertising by allowing PC vendors to slap "Vista CapAble" stickers on crappy low-end PC's. Let's just get the truth out here! Vista was originally supposed to be released prior to the Christmas shopping season '06, but for reasons of our own we had to put off the release until '07 (for Vista this was the 17th and last time we changed the release date). The PC vendors went wild, Mikey Dell fell to his knees before me and pleaded for help, "Half of our sales are during this quarter, people won't buy! They'll wait! Oh my God! Oh my God!" I calmly got him up and said, "Really Mike! I'm not your God! But I do know what you mean, we have a plan! Buck up dude." Still sniffling he whimpered, "Thank you God! What's you plan Bill?" I Replied, "Stop calling me that!" I sat him down in MY chair and explained, "You guys can just slap a sticker on the low-end crap! Have it say 'Windows Vista CapAble', the half decent ones slap 'Premium Ready" on 'em!" Sounding worried he stuttered, "those boat anchors won't run Vista". I looked him straight in the eye, "I have the Nasal toned Nerds (NtN's) down in the basement stripping Vista down to Windows 95! We are gonna' call it Vista Home edition, we'll let them upgrade to that!", we both had a good little chuckle. I went over to him, grabbed a pen and paper and wrote - "CapAble" I winked at him and said "get it?" He stared at it for a few seconds then smiled and slooowly said, "yeah, Cap Able! ... able but with a cap!" He stood and high fived me, he screamed, "Jesus! You are slick!" ... maybe I am, maybe I am!
For legacy installers it will prompt if the installer is called Setup.exe or similar. If it's called anything else then it won't prompt.
The UAC prompts are so annoying that most people will deactivate them.
Intel 910 works mighty fine on Compiz-Fusion with almost all eye candies enabled.
If Aero cannot work well on Intel 910, it's probably because Aero is an incompetent pile of junk compared to Compiz.
I think you are overstating the importance of the web as a platform, the web is actually a weak platform to implement most applications. OCR, pixel pushing, music arranging... even IM, email, rss, and blogging is easier and better done in the desktop, and there has always been applications for that, many of them freeware.
On the other hand the OS has never been either a requirement or an impediment for using desktop applications. Of course many, many software developers choose to lock themselves into windows by using windows only apis and libraries, but cross-platform toolkits like gtk+ have existed for years.
What I'm trying to say is that providing good applications is not the job of an OS, it's the job of application developers.
The job of an OS is to be fast, stable, compatible and affordable; and Vista has failed in *all* of these requirements. This is the reason Vista is in problems.
But... the future refused to change.
Yeah. I don't think Vista is that bad, it's practically the same as XP after a little customisation. Thing is, I would never pay a few hundred euros for what amounts to nothing useful to me. I just don't care; DX10 turned out to be a slow piece of wet bark, I like the classic theme better than Aero. I also dislike the dishonesty they seem to be pulling with games for it, for example Halo 2, which I completed entirely in XP but had technical problems in Vista with, and Crysis' very high settings which mysteriously also work in XP despite being disabled in the game...
Free Hans!
Actually, you'll find it's because Aero demands decent pixel shader support to do the blur effect underneath the titlebar (aka, glass). That's the difference between compiz and aero, basically. Aero uses a bunch of pixel shaders, and thus, limits itself as to what cards can do everything. Compiz uses basic transforms (in most cases) instead, and runs on more hardware as a result. (Note, hardware accelerated alpha blending isn't texture-mapped blurring. The latter's a bit more complex)
Which looks better is a matter of subjective opinion. Glass looks nice to me, but then, I only ever have high-end video cards. Some of the compiz effects are nice as well, although quite a few just bring a system to it's knees just as easily as Aero will, and some compiz effects seem fairly pointless. A lot of it is asthetics, although compiz does have some handy ones as well as just visually appealing ones.
ash
Would you rather keep your documents on the local machine or trust google with everything? Please send your response via GMAIL so they can keep the progression of discourse clear.
which is a good reason to keep using the OS... but I don't see docs & mp3s as the only thing you want to keep on your box & out of the internet's hands... taxes, financial stuff, etc... and I'm not at all willing to say that the only thing people need a computer for is internet access. People have been pronouncing the end of MS with similiar arguments for at least a decade now (anyone here want to raise their hands for "the net is the computer"?). it just doesn't feel like it's happening.
apple is cool. and pretentious. and expensive. and limited. they're not going to win this. it's going to be *ux (nothing jobs produces counts) or it's going to be some cell phone revolution that doesn't even make sense yet.
Microsoft does not sell software.
It sells lies.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It seems to me, that microsoft can press everything into the market.
Where are the 100 million vista-users? Do they only buy it, or do they install it on their computers, also? They seem not to use the internet, because the statistic says, that Windows XP is still with 80 percent the market leader.
http://www.w3counter.com/
If you are using vista and you are not satisfied, then it may be best for you to switch to a Macintosh. Please, if you are not in the least technically skilled, don't try Linux. You can't sue someone, if you screw up the installation and lose all your data.
It is no good idea, to switch from Windows to Linux, only because you are temporally not satisfied with the products from microsoft. We linux-users have chosen it, because it gives us the freedom to do with our hardware what we want to do with it, not what a single company what's us to make us do with it (for a limited time until the next update has to be sold). It is a different world. You have been warned!
Yeah, then they stopped us from pirating it with real key validation so adoption was abysmal.
I had a copy, but I couldn't put it on the net so it never got used.
As we have always said, piracy sells products.
AC because I modded earlier
I'm sure if the Compiz-Fusion developers wanted to use shaders they'd have done it as well - after all, for the same visual effect, implementing it using shaders is a LOT easier than without.
Granted the glass effect might not be possibly done without shaders. But in terms of actually looking good, I'd bet there is a combination of Compiz effects that gives you a visually result just as pleasing.
In other words, the choice of using shaders only gives Aero little (if any!) advantage of aesthetic substance. However it shuts out entire classes of GPU, I reckon, probably just for the sake of being easier to program. I guess Vista's tight deadline played a role there.
If you choose a technology that makes your programming a bit easier but the end result excludes a lot of customers, that's one definition of incompetence in my book.
And yet we're still talking about it...
Slashdot | Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible
Slashdot | Microsoft Cuts Vista Price In 70 Countries
Slashdot | Did Amazon Induce Vista's Premature Birth?
Slashdot | "Vista Capable" Lawsuit Is Now a Class Action
Slashdot | Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista
Slashdot | Microsoft Had Doubts About the 'Vista Capable' Label
Slashdot | Microsoft Pulls Vista SP1 Update
Slashdot | Hostile ta Vista, Baby
Slashdot | Windows Vista Annoyances
Slashdot | Vista SP1 Update Locks Out Some Users
and that's just the first page of Google results!
In fact, in the past 12 months, there have been 'about 231' slashdot articles with 'Vista' in the title, according to Google. that is vs 'about 339' for linux, and 'about 192' for apple. (also, about 'about 1' for 'a life'
I thought Initech was just fabricated for "Office Space."
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
I'd go for the guy ultimately responsible -- Ballmer.
(Gates, supposedly, wasn't directly involved any more, and it would be really hard to fire him now.
About the closest we could get to that would be to put a lien on all his shares, but what would the court do with shares of Microsoft?
Hmm. Maybe turn them over to the government to sell off to reduce the debt?
Or, maybe, fine him USD 30,000,000,000 so that he has to sell all his shares to pay the fine, and, no, that still doesn't approach the economic damage Gates has done through Microsoft. And the economic damage of so many shares of Microsoft hitting the block at once? Catch-22.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Best VM control software I've used. Sun seems to agree as they just bought them out.
I mean, he's the guy who put Apple in bed with iNTEL for pseudo-UWB when real UWB was available without the necessity of a switch.
...
...
When the real story gets out on what happened with the switch,
And Apple could have been on the leading edge of yet two more curves, if Jobs vision hadn't failed -- low power consumption and mesh networking. Make that three, since the UWB could have been as hard to tap as a physical wire.
So bent on getting the processing power of a G5 into a notebook when it isn't necessary to have that much power in most notebooks. Dual G4 at 500MHz is plenty for most users.
And arbitrarily holding the clock rates on the G4 models down so the iNTEL core CraPUs would look good.
When the real story gets out on the switch
Hmm.
Well, pretty soon, as we see take-up of ODF, people will start seeing what simple tagged text will buy them. Without all the hassles of complicated programs trying to do syntax checks against grammar.
When that happens, Microsoft could, if the managers had any imagination, make enough money to stay alive by opening their specs and selling services to large corporations building custom programs to strip the MSOffice formatting crud and replace it with simple tags calculated by the format vs. department practices.
joudanzuki
so the solution is ...
Ubuntu
Red Hat
Cent OS
SuSE (of course)
DSL and/or Puppy, really. Many of them really didn't need the new hardware in the first place.
Microsoft should settle by giving them free live CDs for all the above, customized to "Vista compatible" machines, and with GPL-compatible drivers for all the hardware.
Shoot, SuSE is even already mostly there. By the time the first arguments are scheduled in this suit, MS could be ready with an OS that would allow them to settle out-of-court.
All the problems solved. These guys could be the testbed for Microsoft's replacement OS for Vista this year, if Microsoft could really quit its emotional dependency on the illusion of lock-in.
(Did my wife put something strange in the water she boiled the rice in this morning?)
joudanzuki
... in the headline of this story?
If Buffett didn't puke upon reading this email, he surely didn't read it all.
well according to MS you are gay unless you are a GAMER! If you don't run a card that does DX10 then you made a mistake! Why else would you get something less than a DX10 compatible card? Cuz its cheaper? Preposterous! As a result they made using regular fuckin windows require some power just to make a point. That point is that you are all yuppies! If you wanted an OS and hardware that would have worked without you having to ask questions you should have got a Mac. Also Compiz, tho totally sweet (there aint no wobbley windows in Vista), isnt perfect and causes stuff to fuck up. I mostly have problems when I want to run windowed 3D crap like Maya. Basically we as consumers are all fucked. MS obviously fucks us. Apple tricks us into thinking we arent fucked but before you realize it you turned gay. And Linux isnt and may never be a finished product. :*\
Balderdash!
And yet we're still talking about it... I appreciate the irony, but the point still stands.
Look at the titles you listed: Slashdot | Vista SP1 Is Even Less Compatible
Slashdot | Microsoft Cuts Vista Price In 70 Countries
Slashdot | Did Amazon Induce Vista's Premature Birth?
Slashdot | "Vista Capable" Lawsuit Is Now a Class Action
Slashdot | Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista
Slashdot | Microsoft Had Doubts About the 'Vista Capable' Label
Slashdot | Microsoft Pulls Vista SP1 Update
Slashdot | Hostile ta Vista, Baby
Slashdot | Windows Vista Annoyances
Slashdot | Vista SP1 Update Locks Out Some Users There's absolutely no enthusiasm for Vista. Sure, this is Slashdot, so one wouldn't expect a ticker-tape parade or anything, but you're the one who chose Slashdot as your metric.
There was a frenzy leading up to the release of Vista. With all the buzz from the tech media, it's almost like Bill Gates invited everyone to his place where he had this huge firework that was 3' tall and 2' around, he lit the fuse, then ran back, warning everyone "watch out!" and as the fuse enters the firework...
Sizzle! It's the world's biggest and lamest snake. and that's just the first page of Google results!
In fact, in the past 12 months, there have been 'about 231' slashdot articles with 'Vista' in the title, according to Google. that is vs 'about 339' for linux, and 'about 192' for apple. (also, about 'about 1' for 'a life'
There's just no excitement for Vista. Like I said, the tech world's biggest "meh". Even Ginger was better met than Vista (and I'd give it second place for "meh", mostly because of the hype leading up to it). Unlike Vista, however, the Segway is pretty neat, if majorly nerdy.
Not all Vista users hate it. I have used it for almost a year and I have no problems with it, nor have I had to reinstall it yet. When I do use it, I have Aero glass turned on w/o problems. Then again, I got my machine new with Vista pre-installed, so the problems others have had haven't shown up. The specs:
Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 2.13 GHz
2 GB RAM
256MB ATI Radeon X1600 Pro
250GB SATA HD split between Vista and Linux (OpenSuse)
Using dial-up for Internet access
I am not a troll or a fanboy, but I am just giving my opinion of Vista so far.
Ouch. I kinda disagree -- the Edsel had flair
Yes, but how many pieces of flair did it come with, standard?
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Actually, it's the third /. story to show up on the front page with the same thing.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/12/1658249
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/28/1746211
So does that make it a tripe?
'Course, if I paid for the subscription, I'd get to see the tripe ahead of the Mere Mortals who do not part with their hard-earned, eh?
I think I'll pass.
Title says 185 pages, while quick summary says 158 pages. I guess those 27 pages left are similar slashdot comments. :-)
How this got insightful shows how much people don't understand this story.
The Vista Capable sticker is not about buying a machine with Vista on it. The Class Action Lawsuit is not about Vista running "like crap". This lawsuit is because people bought Windows XP computers with a sticker basically telling them the machine would be able to run Windows Vista when it came out. The lawsuit is because when Vista did come out, most of these Vista Capable computers would not run anything but Vista Home Basic, basically, Vista would run without Aero, which a lot of people claim is the experience Microsoft marketed as being Vista.
So yes, maybe you only care about Flash and AJAX, but the people in this lawsuit very much care about the OS itself. Don't buy the Hype, Fat client and stand-alone applications are here to stay. The WEB isn't the solution to every problem.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
Serenity Now!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I believe, if software is worth it's penny, it should be paid for.
Of course open source has it's place, don't get me wrong.
I payed for my copy of server 2003 back then, and I'm still using it today. I have no regrets. It's proven it's worth ten-thousand fold...which I must admit...is a RARE thing these days to find happening with a Microsoft product.
The "i915" evilness Microsoft speaks about is also dictated to/used by Apple. See those all brand new games from EA saying "Integrated graphics not supported" or iTunes cover flow mysteriously doesn't function? That is the Chip EA speaks about.
As every x86 manufacturer, Apple, using very advanced desktop acceleration at core level of OS has been tricked or forced by Intel to use i915. OS X uses the 3d hardware functionality to accelerate Desktop so unlike Windows, it is not just gamers effected. It can even effect text document scrolling.
First of all, there are many Mactels running i915, the same chip and they are living some problems. Of course Apple goes open standard based and codes better without giving heck to compatibility of an old VB4 program so the problems are much more light.
The real problem here which even evil themselves live is the duopoly in graphics business and a CPU manufacturer who can't admit GPU is entirely different thing and pushes their lame chips to manufacturers. I am very surprised that NVidia/AMD-ATI didn't speak about these mails yet. Perhaps they say "we will speak in court too", who knows? We may even see similar mails traded inside Apple about that horrible piece of junk Intel dictated.
Just another slashDot post so the iPeople can get there rocks off at bashing Microsoft. As a previous poster pointed out this is the 3rd post for the same story. slashDot has really been trying hard lately to post stories just for Microsoft bashing. Including posting several stories older than dirt just to prove they are bias.
slashDot you really should remove the tagline "News for Nerds". News implies you have credibility when you report. In my view you are rapidly losing yours.
I also find it curious that while we get 3 of the same Microsoft story we did not get the story about Apple being sued over the iPhone. Just curious to me.
http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/16535/
_________
Ever notice how Microsft fans do not feel the need to bash Apple every chance they get? Think about it.
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
Without some sort of sticker program, people would have stopped buying PCs for fear of Vista obsolecence just around the corner. That would have sucked for the sellers, especially hardware sellers who would have got stuck with obsolete stock.
That even pretty sharp and jaded people got fooled indicates that this sticker program was effective at fooling people and it would seem that this was their intention and they succeeded.
Most people equate Vista with shiny pixels and would feel suckered if their machine could not do the shiny pixels.
To be honest and transparent, MS should have released the limited UI under a completely different brand.
Engineering is the art of compromise.