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University of Penn. Recommends Against Vista SP1
At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1. "University of Pennsylvania tech staffers are advising faculty and students not to upgrade their computers to the new service pack for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. The school's Information Systems & Computing department said it will support Vista SP1 on new systems where it's pre-installed, but added that it 'strongly recommends that all other users adopt a "wait and see" attitude,' according to a newly published department bulletin." And CIO magazine doesn't quite go so far as to call on Microsoft to throw away Vista, but it does ask its readers to weigh in on that topic.
Isn't that the standard advice for any major upgrade on any operating system ever?...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If they were cautious about change then they would not have accepted Vista, which is a change. Accepting the change to Vista would be liberal, not conservative.
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
As has been said above; this was going to happen. I know of companies running OS X, companies running Linux servers, who all adopt the wait-and-see approach. I'm not that impressed with Vista either, but I don't think I've ever seen an update to an operating system in which all users had total confidence in the manufacturer and OS enough to all update, no questions asked.
Yes, I agree there are certain aspects of Vista which deserve to be slated, but this is more process related than product related.
The Mothership
CIO magazine also doesn't go so far as to call on Microsoft to club baby seals. Why is the summary reporting on shit that people didn't do?
For that matter, why is the CIO magazine article even included in the summary? Did Twitter just scour the internet for anti-Vista articles and throw them all into one stupid Slashdot submission?
Slow Down, Cowboy! It's been 60 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment.
Why are they letting Twitter back on his soapbox?
No, because big business is "conservative" and anything else is "liberal" in this strange age of ours.
Why not take it a step further and recommend against Vista?
Alright -- this is the last straw!
If this site is going to accept journal entries from twitter as articles for the main page, why don't we just stop bothering with this moderation BS and pretending to be an unbiased site? It's not as if we haven't discussed this topic 100 times already..
This article felt so worthy of a "slownewsday" tag... We are also waiting a bit with upgrading the few Vista computers we have running over here. It's just common sense, and has nothing to do with Vista, by the way.
The news here has to be those companies that jumps to SP1 without checking up on any risks with that. You'll have a harder time finding stories about those.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
And good decision to accept it, kdawson. You two are some of the best sources of unbiased information out there. Keep fighting the good fight!
These guys pulled some strings?
http://www.apple.com/education/profiles/upenn/
The shirts make these guys look bought - not funded.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
It shouldn't read liberal or conservative. It should read sucky. That is the adjective that fits UPenn best. Sucky.
I have been a die-hard Microsoft user since MS-DOS on my ancient Heathkit XT clone. I currently use XP Pro and XP Media Center. I refuse to install Vista, as I enjoy a certain degree of control over my operating system. I still, by habit, use command lines in a DOS window to do things that Windows can do via the GUI. I guess I'm showing my age...
This experience comes at a cost, namely supporting machines for my family and friends. Never mind what the media and professionals say about Vista, but when my friends and family BEG me to remove Vista and replace it with XP, you know something is bad wrong with this operating system.
These days, if someone is buying a new machine, and all they do is email, browsing, pictures and the like, I will always recommend a Mac. I don't have to support the damn thing - it just works. If they're intent on a PC or need one for certain software, I send them to the Dell Outlet where you can still get a fantastic Core 2 Duo Optiplex with a 3-year warranty and XP for a few hundred bucks.
If by chance I'm forced into Vista, I too am moving to Mac. Times change. Microsoft fucked up. I never thought I'd be advocating Macs, ever.
They were liberal enough to try Vista despite it coming from Microsoft. However, if one wants to argue whether supporting Microsoft is a liberal or conservative position in the United States, look back to what happened to the case the people of the United States had against Microsoft once George Bush entered the White House.
http://slashdot.org/~twitter/journal/177855
Shame it's not updated for SP1, contains links to lists of links of things that are out of date (e.g. iPod problems), has silly claims, contains inaccurate/biased 'studies' like this highly scientific study of five games (highly debunked in the comments).
For what it's worth, I'd highly recommend that Vista users install SP1.
So, properly this would make Penn "neoconservative".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I laughed, nice one.
Vista Business and aero on a 30$ ati x300, and 1GB of ram.
No crashes so far.
Able to run eclipse and visual studio 2008.
People seem to want to portray vista as the coming of the anti-crist, but so I'm very happy with it.
So let me get this straight - a bunch of SAs basically got together and said, "Don't do anything to your PCs that you might have to call me for?" And this is news?
Except for say UAC, all the DRM and the fact that the thing runs slower on more powerful hardware then XP?
Of course if all you read is slashdot you would also think that NT is just a unix wannabe
It employs many design concepts from *Nix that weren't present in 9X so in a way it is very similar to Unix. Now granted there are only a finite way of solving problems present in Windows 9X so making it more Unix like is one of the ways to make it more secure.
2000 an expensive upgrade for those who already have 95 and dont need it
2000 probably won't run on the same hardware that 95 ran on, so yes they don't need what they can't run.
and that XP is just 2000 with fisher price colors
It is, it is basically Windows 2K with a shiny theme on it much like how Vista is like XP with a bunch of crap thrown on it and a shiny GUI.
A bit off topic, but I can't help replying to such blatant lies.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Vista SP1 helped me. When I installed it and recieved more driver errors than before, I decided it was time to venture beyond the mac/windows/linux world and into the world of BSD's. I'm so torn between FreeBsd and OpenBsd....now I have both on my server :)
Trying to install linux on my microwave, but keep getting a kernel panic...
When are we going to get the articles highlighting the benefits of SP1 here on /.? The positive comments posted as 'articles'?
I've installed it on 3 machines already and it certainly has improved the system a lot, it feels far more responsive and I didn't have any problems during the install either. By browsing the comments on the previous SP1 'story' (some negative blog comments) here on SlashDot I am not alone in this. Looking around the web I can find many having a similar positive experience with SP1 yet /. continues to fail to report this.
I know it's important only to alumni and friends of these schools, but Penn State (Twitter's Firehose title) is different from the University of Pennsylvania.
Why? Twitter is reformed. The neo-Nazi thing was only a phase. Karma-whoring is twitter's new fad.
Circumcision is child abuse.
... such as?
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
The university would offer advice and support for the students own computers - any reasonable university is going to be "liberal enough" to let people use their own machines!
It's most likely because Penn's financial program relies on IE6 and barely supports IE7. Of course, it could be because they haven't got their incentive check from Microsoft yet.
2 It's a post from Twitter.
3 It got the green light from kdawson.
Why do we have to confuse a technically-charged "business" decision with politics anyways?
I swear I wish we could keep those conservative vs liberal arguments for the goverment's spending.
Oh wait you think because it's public money, it becomes a governmental issue? Then why isn't the CIO of a university elected?
Sheesh it's gvmt or it's not, but it can't be halfway.
The MS logic seems to be "Let's make a pretty stable OS, and then let's release a really crummy one". XP was pretty good. I had no problems with XP. I liked XP. Then Vista comes out and nothing seems to work right. I've been using Vista on a few boxes for a year now, and wonder "What's the point? Why would anyone want Vista? A more fancy UI and some nifty media enhancements? Sorry, it just doesn't make sense".
Vista seems to be Windows ME part 2. A really crapy OS to replace a somewhat stable one. I don't see how a service pack could make things any worse.
The Internet is generally stupid
Just curious, who out there actually uses vista and enjoy's it? I have an upgrade from XP to Vista from my university sitting in a drawer, but I won't touch it, not until I start hearing good things about Vista, but I guess its just going to sit there. Do you think maybe Microsoft thinks it has too many customers?
Isn't the whole "wait until it's proven to upgrade" thing pretty much standard operating procedure for any major update to software as critical as on OS? I don't know of any organization of significant size that would go ahead and ship off an update without going through extensive testing and determining if the update makes sense. Hell, my unnamed organization just now is updating to SQL Server 2000 to 2005. We have an "if it works, don't fix it" attitude, which makes sense in my opinion. I don't see how this service pack would be any different.
I got nothin'
I'm a unix/mac user, and have been for years. I had to buy a Windows machine for a specific project, so I went with an Acer laptop (~500 USD). I bought it last week, it came with Windows Vista, and everything worked just fine. Sure, the UI sucks, but it's easy to go back to a "productive" look and feel. I noticed file copying was painfully slow. I applied SP1 the night it camed out, and the machine works just fine -- and file copying is way faster.
.NET 3.5 and DirectX 10...
I strongly suspect that machines "born" with Vista in them work just fine. I think MS screwed up with forcing people to upgrade to an OS that clearly needs different hardware. But going from these observation to saying that Vista should die, is a bit of a stretch. They should not market it as an upgrade, but target it only to new machines with the "right" hardware. Plus, new features that may be marketed as an upgrade should be available, such as
I never thought I'd be defending MS, but come on, stop missinforming people. Vista is not the devil, it actually works, and it is a clear improvement over other versions (granted, last one I used was NT 4)
"Journal written by twitter (104583) and posted by kdawson"
'nuff sed...
"At least one university liberal enough to accept the deeply flawed and mostly rejected Vista OS is recommending faculty and students stay away from SP1."
I wonder if by this you mean that they are ignorant enough to recommend against a service pack that, on the four systems I've installed on, works great and improves any troubles I've had with Vista. I still wonder just how few of the people who call Vista "deeply flawed" have actually tried it (my guess is four).
Weren't we supposed to "wait and see" UNTIL SP1 came out?
It employs many design concepts from *Nix that weren't present in 9X
VMS, surely?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
What the hell is this submitter on? First of all, somebody explain to me how using Vista makes you a "liberal". Second, if students, faculty, or staff want to use Vista, what the hell kind of university is going to forbid them from it, as the submitter seems to suggest? The university's IT people are paid to enable these users to get their work done, not punish them for their choice of software like a bunch of petty morons. Nobody forbids me from using Linux on my university's network, nor would I expect them to do so for people using Mac or Windows. This guy's really got it backwards.
As for the content of the article... I can't speak for the UPenn IT people or whatever issues they've encountered with it, but my own personal experience is that sp1 works better than the initial release. For me (I dual boot linux and vista), it's been fewer bugs, fewer crashes, faster performance. Your mileage may vary.
I use it and it works great. I also have hardware that suits it: Dual core 3.0ghz, 2gb ram, hd2600xt video. If you have old hardware (e.g. what came with XP) then I wouldn't recommened using Vista but if your computer doesn't contain parts made of stone then Vista works good. SP1 makes it even better. And some people complain that it's a RAM hog, it is *but* the reason RAM utilization is high is because Vista takes unused RAM and dynamically uses it as a cache. When Vista does it it's considered a pig but the other day when an article talking about doing the same thing for Linux came up of course it was a giant leap for computing kind. Check your bias around here I guess.
Shh.
Everyone really needs to start getting over themselves. XP is an old OS and is not nearly as secure as Vista. The quirks people complain about in Vista are usually because of the software development company not adherring to the SDK for Vista. I've seen very few legitimate complaints about Vista. As has already been stated by many users this is not an arguement about the quality of Vista this is an arguement about the quality of IT/Sys Admin Professionals. I for one salute the IT/Sys Admin Professionals at whatever school this is (UPenn...Penn State...who know, who cares :P).
As for people who've installed Vista SP1 and have had multiple driver issues this is no ones fault but your own. SP1 is not pushed as a critical update on all machines and yours was probably one of them. This means that your computer doesn't meet the requirements (in this case proper drivers) of SP1. You should have checked everything before installing it.
It depends. I'm working for a Systems Integrator/ISV. All our internal prod stuff is Bleeding Edge. We've been running Vista since Nov 06, and have been using the IIS7 GO LIVE! License. With RTM out, i'll be upgrading all our other servers next month (as long as the software running on them is supported, of course).
No better way to gain experience and real world QA.
Microsoft decided to fix some glaring security architecture issues that previous operating systems had, and now badly written 3rd party software breaks.
And you guys blame Microsoft. If one developed software against the recommendations for Windows XP, there wouldn't have been much breakage. Of course the one or other thing could still go wrong, but it's the 3rd parties fault for not providing a fix at the time Vista was officially released.
It's saying "Penn State" in a couple of places on Slashdot, but this story is from the University of Pennsylvania, which is not the same school. Penn State is in Happy Valley, PA, while the University of Pennsylvania is in Philadelphia, PA.
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Yea XP Was total crap before SP1 so i am reserving judgment on vista till this summer or so. the upgrade from OS 9 to OSX was a BITCH! and yes xp will run on windows 95 hardware because i made that leap when xp came out and i had a 1GHz P3 and 512 ram and a bitchin 32 or 64MB Ati graphics card cannot remember and that was state of the art and xp was slow as vista if not even slower and you could edit the xp code in note pad so you know all you xp lovers missed the fun before SP1 you are used to the 3+ year old refined xp that works well in 2 3 years vista will be in the same spot and i never owned 98 or ME and i more than likely won't upgrade till the next os because that is my way and linux is good and fast wine rocks and mac is great for media design they all have pluses and that is why i have one of each.
So we "wait and see". Well, SP1 has been out for a week or so now.. where's our news, slashdot?
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Ah, Windows Vista...
Why didn't they just call it "Windows ME, the next generation"?
Vice President of Computer and Information Services
Fire kdawson and replace him with an African American.
Dude, have you even installed it? I'm running SP1 on three different Vista machines, and it hasn't broken anything yet. In fact the systems run better in a general performance sense.
I'm no MS fanboy -- if anything I'm a Linux bigot -- but all the Vista bashing is just getting ridiculous. My job requires that I work in MS operating systems, plus I'm a gamer, so I'm stuck with them. And I'm accustomed to how Vista works now, and really dislike it when I have to use XP. If people just gave it a chance and learned to work with it, I think they'd be surprised.
Vista introduces some good stuff. For example, the new graphics system is more stable. When a video driver crashes it reinstantiates itself. Also, look at the MSDN documentation of the Win32 API. They've added some good stuff. Like, for example, some synchronization primitives that Win32 has lacked for a long time: condition variables and RW-locks.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
It's one thing slashdotters slagging off Vista but what about when its critised by MS advocates?
Codeproject is a stong MS technology site funded by MS themseleves. One of the founding members has voiced his critisim of the OS and said that he would rather use a Mac than Vista.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Im the company IT guy and recently one of our female staffers purchased a brand new dual core Compaq laptop to replace her ageing P4 model. What she found is two of the USB ports refuse to work and her wireless modem would not work even though they were all certified by Microsoft. She took it to an IT "Windows" specialist and and he was stumped and said the laptop must be faulty. Out of curiosity I had a look at the machine booted up both my XP live and Ubuntu Live CD and everything worked. The fix was simple just install XP and recommend she find a new Windows support shop. PS on a side note she said the new laptop running Vista was way slower than her old machine running XP.
Yeah NT was VMS with its brains knocked out.
NT 3.1 was actually quite good. Stable as a rock. NT 3.5 wasn't bad either. NT4 it started to go downhill. 2000 started out a trainwreck and ended up quite good after enough service packs and fixes... as did XP (only took them 2 (arguably) or 3 service packs to do it too).
Vista is still at the trainwreck stage, but at least SP1 takes it out of beta.
The unbiased site would have:
1 a seperate section for the family of operating systems to be found on 92% of the world's desktops and with a very significant presence in the server room and other markets.
Operating System Market Share for February, 2008
2 it would dispose of the stained glass window and Borg icons which set the tone for every posting
3 it would accept that Vista is showing sustained and healthy growth in the marketplace, while the *NIX platforms, other than OSX, appear stagnant.
Top Operating System Share Trend for April, 2007 to February, 2008
[Vista 13%. "The Other" 2%]
OS Platform Dtatistics February 2008
[Vista 8% Up from 0% in one year. Linux 4% Up from 2% in five years.]
Wow.. that's risky.
In most companies we deal with even upgrading to 2003 or XP is considered a risk, and only done on noncritical machines run in parallel with the critical ones.
In Nov 06 you're talking about the RC I presume - the one that wouldn't run anything useful without falling over... in production? I wish I had the balls to try that.
Liberal had a meaning prior to politics - specifically - lacking moral restraint.
It's sort of funny that liberal is seen as a pejorative. Or at least a "high reaction" type of word. . .
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Um, I used to run XP on a dual Xeon with 4GB of RAM and installed Vista on it. After shutting down some of the services I don't really need, I can't see the difference. As for UAC, you can turn it off if you feel the need.
Since KDE looks much like the Win32 shell and ACL-based security seems to be all the rage, I supposed that goes both ways.
Maybe because it was released five years after Windows 95. Perhaps you can show me KDE 4.x running on a Pentium II 450. More importantly, W2K ran on the same hardware as NT4, which is what it was meant to replace. It also ran on the same hardware as Windows 98 SE.
It's not, there are thousands of improvements between XP and 2000, and claiming otherwise because you can make XP look like 2000 is right out of the armchair "evangelist" cookbook. New versions of MSMQ, IIS, COM+, improvements in DCOM, expanded group policy settings, QoS providers, better WMI coverage, better wireless support, a firewall, the security center, better multi-user support, etc. etc. Oh, and themes, yes.
A bit off topic, but I can't help replying to such blatant lies. Or opinions passed as facts.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
The consensus appears to be developing that Windows Vista is the latest version of Windows ME. I'm advising my clients to skip Vista and wait for Windows 7 - since by that time, you'll have no choice but to upgrade to it - or switch to Linux (which may still not be an option for some people by 2009 or whenever "7" comes out.) Just make sure you can access enough Windows XP licenses to cover new purchases of machines for the next couple of years. This PC World article shows you how.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Try turining off the automatic update feature, or efusing to install the automatically downloaded update file. Vista will bug you, and it won't stop. U of P should never have allowed VIsta into any of its computers, and should have provided students with an "upgrade" to XP Pro. They should be telling Microsoft to keep Win XP alive until a better alternative to Vista is available. One of Microsoft's biggest mistakes was to create an OS that treats all users as unknowing computer novices.
Oh please. We all know you haven't even used Vista. You just like trolling against anything MS. That's been proven time and again by your own words.
That's not why we blame Microsoft.
We blame Microsoft for making it irritating, DRM infested and slow when they fixed the security issues.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I have steered many people away from Vista simply because of system requirements. I also make it a policy of my business to recommend open source as opposed to Microsoft products.
So I guess this means we should wait for SP1 of SP1 before applying the first SP1?
Every MS fanboy on Slashdot says that.
It's because Microsoft is an inherently dishonest company.
So now - "wait and see" means "stay away from". Interesting interpretation.
And to respond to Jugalator's slow news day remark, you link to a journal article of his from 2005 complaining about posting limits? Why do you even bother wasting your precious few posts per day on such nonsense?
Anyone who knows anything about comps knows vista is a waste of time,money,resources...
Ok, Vista runs slower than XP. I don't debate that. But, XP ran slower than Windows 98, OR Windows 2000. How much of this is love-to-hate-microsoft, and how much of it is really truly bad?
I've been using Vista since October, and, where stuff is moved around, and a little different, it is NOT Satan personified. Turn of UAC, use Google Desktop instead of Windows Sidebar, Firefox instead of IE, and it's been very stable.
No. You shouldn't upgrade your old hardware. But, if it's new hardware, it will run just fine.
And, although fluff, Aero is actually COOL to play with. Useful? not really. but cool.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
You're a fucking prick, you know that? Morally and ethically bankrupt, not to mention socially incompetent. Now go make another sockpuppet.
I actually work for one of the many IT departments at Upenn, so I'm getting a kick out of these replies.
Saying "don't install this the day it comes out" is officially not news, okay? We've got plenty of custom research and buisiness systems all over the university, and getting everything to work is a bitch. I'm sure ISC will recommend installing it later after they are done testing all their systems.
Slow news day I guess?
Ok, Vista runs slower than XP. I don't debate that. But, XP ran slower than Windows 98, OR Windows 2000. How much of this is love-to-hate-microsoft, and how much of it is really truly bad?
The "really truly bad" is that you just used a trend of new tech being slower than older tech to show why Vista isn't that bad. And you seem ok with that. For some reason did we all just decide to be morons? When did I say it was ok to make the upgrades worse?
I'm still just stunned by this. Vista is ok because brand new technology is supposed to be slower than the previous generation!
And for the record, this was posted from a Vista machine. Pre-installed. Soon to be not installed.
It always amazes me how many people advise the way to "fix" Vista is to start turning off all sorts of services, including UAC. Whereas I can run Linux with a services running with absolutely no problems. Where is the defense for Windows there? The fact that Windows seems to work fine until you actually try to run software on it is not much of an OS.
I know I'll be modded down, but I'll just say it: Vista is crap because the only way to make it decent is to practically cripple it and hope everything still works. Linux is very much superior to Windows that it really shouldn't be a surprise. UAC was supposed to be a security improvement, but it never carried out People turn it off or just blindly click "Allow" or "Continue" depending on the context of the UAC. And nobody I know who runs Vista/XP/2000 ever seems to run as anything other than an administrator. Security gradually improves, but its way too little of an improvement.
I'm just going to call it how it is: Windows is and always has been a piece of trash. Even under the NT model. Microsoft is far too motivated with bundling every last feature where it shouldn't be bundled, integrating everything, and making shit-poor security improvements. I switched to Linux and I'm never looking back. Vista is just XP with a little more features pegged on in a hurry. XP was just Windows 2000 with a shitty interface, Windows 2000 was basically just Windows 98/ME with the NT kernel swapped in instead. Shit, most of the NT variants of Windows were mostly just the latest releases of the regular Windows with NT kernel being used instead.
In my opinion, Microsoft started sucking worse and worse when they decided to leave MS-DOS behind. (They always sucked, but they're seemingly worse now.) MS-DOS was at least remotely stable and never bloated in my experience. Sure, other DOSes wound up being much better, but in its heyday, DOS was not bad. Of course, I'd like to take a UNIX-style shell like BASH over DOS any day. I can do a hell of a lot more with BASH, and I can tap into the real potential of my computer.
That's my other beef with DOS and Windows (Both Kernel32 and NT kernel based.) is that it doesn't allow near the same level of control over every aspect of the computer the way UNIX and UNIX-likes do. UNIX ain't perfect, but it sure as hell is better than all th other shit out there. Mac OS suffers from hold-your-hand syndrome, Windows is an insecure, unstable POS, and the likes of Be OS, NEXT, and Amiga are far too obscure nowadays too be of much use. BSD is semi-decent, but it is beginning to show its age. Linux is at the best place right now. Its slowly but surely becoming prominent on the desktop. No, this is not the year of Linux on the desktop, but I'd take Linux on mine readily over any other.
I see nothing defensible in Windows. Unstable, insecure, bloated, and Microsoft has a nasty habit of just copying its biggest competitors for each release. (Most elements of Vista are blatant copies of Mac OS X and even Linux and UNIX. This isn't so bad except the fact that Microsoft is carrying on as if they created all these things themselves.
The GUI itself: Ripped from Mac OS (Which was taken from the PARC Interface.)
UAC: Pathetic failed attempt to copy sudo and gksudo.
Aero Glass: Taken from both Linux (Compiz + Beryl.) and Mac OS X (Aqua).
Internet Explorer: Stolen from Spyglass. (Classic backstabbing.)
DOS: Buyout from Seattle Computer Products for 50 Kilodollars.
I could go on and on and on. And I might on some obscure web page. But lets leave it at this, no aspect of Microsoft is defensible. Not. One. Thing.
Well for starters, several programs that run in BOINC will no longer run. My ATI software doesn't work right and it crashes, and I no longer can use extended desktop. The internet is undoubtedly slower (and now my max d/l speed is about 5x faster when I boot to Linux) and I've been experiencing strange issues (and a few crashes) in Visual Studio. After all the trouble Vista has caused, I was hoping for some relief with SP1. The only difference I've seen so far is slower internet and less compatibility.
The path to enlightenment is truly through homemade drugs!
I know, this bothered me too. I'm NYU anyway but I grew up in Philly and now UPenn's campus and its the mark of a foreigner to mix up Penn State and Upenn because UPenn is in Philly and is Ivy. Penn State, however, is a great school (even if these days "state" in a school name is looked down upon for some dumb reason). Tag !pennstate if it bothers you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let me see if I follow your logic:
Because Microsoft is dishonest, all Microsoft fanboys are dishonest. Since all MS fanboys disclaim their fanboy status, anyone disclaming MS fanboy status is a fanboy. Since the GP claimed not to be an MS fanboy, he is therefore an MS fanboy. Since he is a fanboy, his opinion on the subject is meaningless and we can dismiss it out of hand.
Perfectly reasonable! No fallacies there at all! Great argument!
Isn't that what new versions of OS's are supposed to be? What are they going to do, take a bunch of crap out?
Of course theres plenty of things updated and redone at a low level, but thats not really stuff users notice. They notice things like the (vastly improved) start menu, or the useful but taxing 3d acceleration on the desktop. Yes it's wasteful. No I wouldn't run it on a laptop, or a low end machine, but just like firefox I accept the memory rape in exchange for useful features that justify it.
Not that I even run Vista at home, but I've tried it out for a while and would not object to it on a new PC.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
I'd say parts of it are useful. I still like compiz better for its alttab animation, but having windows animate better makes it easier to keep track of what you're doing (i.e firefox pops up a dialog, you see it animate in then animate out when you close it) and also makes it more obvious to new users.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Perhaps this guy has some vested interest in suggesting not to upgrade.
Service packs (while should be installed with caution) usually fix things. Oh and this one does.. not great but vista is better.
If you're using vista - update it. Duh.
It all depends on what you need to accomplish and what tools you have to accomplish it. We have MS 2005 Virtual server machines and a "Microsoft Shop" mandate so we're stuck with it. We're getting ready to migrate from Exchange 2003 to 2007 and the Exchange server is a virtual machine. (Take a deep breath, as abhorrent as the idea was to me, it made sense with the resources available at the time.)
I was asked how we should proceed and I took a look at available hardware, budgeting and requirements and we're going to be putting in Server 2008 with HyperV virtualized Exchange 2007. Hundreds of nagging doubts assail my nightmares about the project, but the fact is that I'm stuck with MS, need to move to Ex2007, need the mobility and resource redistribution of a virtual machine and I shudder at the thought of further crippling a resource hog like Ex2007 with the problems VS2005 will never overcome. HyperV is being better tested than most things MS releases and it won't be a downtime project.
In most companies the need is balanced against the options available and upgrades are done based on the value of the transition. Sometimes that means bleeding edge, sometimes (like where I worked last year) that means DOS and NT4 systems running on some machines and Vista on others.
Oh yeah, then there is AIX (despite the MS shop mandate) like a rock of stability, much as I loathe trying to do things with it, I've been impressed with how easy it is to keep up to date without worrying about stability.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
The default KDE layout most *nix distroes ship with looks like Explorer. Just right-click the screen to get to the options menu and you can make it look like no other GUI on this planet is less than 30 seconds. Don't try to make it sound like KDE is just a copy of Explorer so that Windows looks better; the default layout was set like that to make newbies comfortable years ago.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Does market share have anything to do with SP1? Anyway, your argument sounds a bit like Bill O'Reilly. Whenever he's challenged on anything of substance, he just repeats that his show has the highest ratings. Doesn't argue much for the quality though.
The dozens and dozens of positive comments posted on the article's site? The comments seem to fall in to one of two categories. People who installed SP1 and had no issues, and people trying to convert the masses to Linux. It makes me wonder if there is any actual credibility to these claims. I think I have to call kdawsonfud on this one. The article seems to imply that SP1 could be detrimental, or dangerous to people, but it fails to actually outline what those things might actually be. Instead, they quote completely random and anonymous sources who haven't actually provided any real information or details about the problems they may or may not be having. If someone on some blog said "THE SKY IS FALLING" would you accept that on faith, or would you want a little more to go on?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Ask yourself: How much did you like XP before SP1? How about before SP2?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It's funny you should mention that.
TCP/IP over firewire support? Gone.
APIs for useful Explorer customisation? Gone. (That extension, which I found infinitely useful, not only doesn't work but has no hope of ever working thanks to an API change).
I'm sure I would have found more stuff I liked that they took out, but at this point I formatted my laptop and installed XP SP2. I actually didn't mind the UAC and other stuff people complain about (and it all ran quite smoothly despite many people who would convince you otherwise - albeit this was on a pretty decked out laptop). Having said that, XP not only runs faster but actually has the features that I care about and which I've become quite accustomed to. What used to be "upgrade to the latest OS and take the bugs and performance hit to have the latest features" is now "downgrade to the previous OS which is more stable and performs better to keep the *cough* latest features (which are 3 years old)".
"Why are you watching the washing machine?"
"I love entertainment, as long as it's clean"
...and stop posting twitter journals on the FP.
Twitter is a troll, Eris too. They both shamelessly bash Microsoft, and especially Vista at all costs, with lies or heavily distorted facts like a raving madman foaming at the mouth, blindly screaming murder.
They represent the absolute worst of FOSS people - complete fanatics motivated by pure hatred of Microsoft, and with zero professional intent.
They are the biggest advert on this site to stay well away from FOSS as much as possible, and in my opinion do more damage to the FOSS reputation than anything else.
throw new NoSignatureException();
1. Fixed in SP1
2. Either driver error or fixed in SP1. The network/audio bug went into SP1 I know.
3. Bullshit. It says in the status bar whether it's plugged in. Sounds like something is seriously wrong with your machine if it start forgetting stuff.
4. BSOD. Will probablly be for driver reasons too, possibly hardware.
5. Look up SuperFetch. Did you want your RAM doing nothing?
6. No idea. If DNS was utterly broken do you think you'd be the first person we hear complaining? I see no evidence of this
7. Turn off indexing (you can specify only to index on AC); turn off Aero (3 clicks).
8. No idea.
In conclusion, I'd say your computer is fucked and you're blaming it on vista as it's a soft target. Get newer drivers, get better hardware.
In fairness though the first waves of drivers for Vista were utterly shoddy, so this is a common complaint for early adopters.
throw new NoSignatureException();
"liberal" and "conservative" have well understood English meanings, which have nothing at all to do with American politics. The original poster was correctly criticising the use of the English words, not making a political comment.
How about we have 22,487 other articles from all the major establishments that are very happy to toll out SP1 on release day?
Why not just call the site Slashdot - news for linux fanboys.
Face it, the vast majority of vista users are very happy. Sorry if that makes a few people fume, but its the truth. if you don't want to install vista, don't, but do something constructive with your lie rather than just whining at people who are happy with vista FFS.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Prior to politics? Like, never?
It's more because controversial statements mean page hits, means ad revenue. They gladly use your vapid, ill supported rantings because it sells; just like tabloids sell.
U of MO IT still recommends all staff and faculty stay on IE 6 since a lot of apps used depend on it. No upgrades anytime in the near future. What's scary - suppossedly the U has a contract has a contract with MS....
It's a matter of tradeoffs generally. Take even a modern Linux distribution, with full default desktop, and try to run it on a system from 1998 (approximate 200 mhz, 32 MB of ram). I'd wager the live desktop that Ubuntu uses for install wouldn't even work. Sure, you can use alternate install and select packages enough so you just have blackbox and basic apps, but the overall experience won't be appreciably better than linux distributions of 10 years ago. I remember back in 1999-2000 the enlightenment people doing efm with some of the 'neat' effects that recommended at least a PII-400 or so, and people were up in arms. Now effects of those class are commonplace. In any event, as hardware advances, software gets to try things that they couldn't do before. Full-text search becomes more ubiquitous as disk space and io capacity allow for storing and reasonable maintenance of an index, as memory increases, applications use more to be more responsive live, as the number of applications a general system can run increases, so does typical usage and process schedulers change to accomodate that, the overhead of Virtualization is now considered reasonable, and the list goes on.
My problem with Vista is it seems to have little actual substance to justify the increase. MS jumped the shark as of Windows 2000. 2000 was followed by ME, and then XP. XP wasn't too horribly bad ultimately, but to this day I don't see the justification of it as a platform over 2000 other than the artificial support/maintenance drop of 2000. It feels like a forced update from MS. It wasn't significantly different under the covers, it pretty much acted like Win2000 with a goofy default theme. Now comes Vista, with mind-numbingly bad behavior with little payoff. The whole networking/audio interaction is a ludicrous hack, and shouldn't be remotely necessary on any decent kernel with sane scheduling. They moved 'direct'sound to userspace and suddenly this occurs. The file copy, despite all the apologists pointing to a MS guy explaining *why* file copies were so bad, is a horrible thing to have to explain away. Sure, XP fibbed a bit and that should be corrected (never should have been that way in the first place), but MS's pursuit of a 'fix' was so convoluted that it bit them in the ass. They say 'file copying is harder than you think', but a lot of the difficulty from that article seemed self-imposed.
I focus on those two points because it indicates how sloppy MS's approach to the core bits of the OS is, while they try to justify the value through a new theme and shiny, useless visual effects (Apple's expose is useful, and compiz under linux provides a number of useful mechanisms that take advantage of the power of windows as textures, Vista on the other hand...).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Yes.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Windows Vista Home Premium on an HP dv2617s laptop with Centrino 1.5 Ghz dual-core, 2 GB memory, Intel X3100 graphics. I was skeptical at first, too, but Vista works great. I needed a machine for internet browsing and school-work (college), and this has performed very well (my desktop, for comparison, runs Windows XP MEdia Center). I also get about 4 -5 hours on a battery charge, and idling, Vista uses about 600 - 700 MB of memory. If Vista doesn't work for you, don't buy it. That's what free enterprise is all about. There many for whom it works just fine!
If you try all of Dan Brown's books and realize they're all crap, you can legitimately say Brown's a crappy author. Same with Twitter -- I've never seen a post of his that isn't reflexive Microsoft bashing.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
We blame Microsoft for changing the operating system at the very last minute, even after the last release candidate, causing maybe well written 3rd party software to become badly written 3rd party software.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
I speak as someone who was goaded into a flame war with one of Twitter's alter-egos*, Mactrope, just the other day (I was making a point about how Apple's decision to foist Safari on iTunes-updaters sucked).
*A user named Macthorpe gave me this info, having apparently had run-ins with Twitter over this supposed name-copying. It's all a bit soap-opera like for me, which is why I judge the content, not the commenter.And if (the awful) Brown's next tome was the greatest work of literature since Shakespeare, what then?
I'd be highly suspicious that he was behind it, but that wouldn't alter the quality of the prose.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Microsoft needs this type of product cycle or we would never upgrade. Assume that they put out the perfect operating system. Properly manages all resources and can handle hardware and software changes flawlessly. You may have to REALLY use your imagination on this one...
If this were the case, why would you ever buy another operating system? Short Answer: Most people wouldn't need to.
Instead they release a pretty good OS like XP. People use it, like it and generally get along with it. Well Microsoft doesn't want to offer XP forever because they want you to upgrade. So they release Vista, which is kind of like XP, but a lot worse. Eventually when XP Support goes out for good, that will be about the same time as the new OS after Vista, which will probably be a lot like Vista, except better at managing resources and hardware. Time for MS to make some money selling that new OS.
MSMQ, IIS, group policy settings, QoS, WMI, firewall and security center are all don't cares. Those things only pertain to a small fraction of the PC using public.It's not, there are thousands of improvements between XP and 2000, and claiming otherwise because you can make XP look like 2000 is right out of the armchair "evangelist" cookbook. New versions of MSMQ, IIS, COM+, improvements in DCOM, expanded group policy settings, QoS providers, better WMI coverage, better wireless support, a firewall, the security center, better multi-user support, etc. etc. Oh, and themes, yes.
multi-user support is as well, but it's relatively flaky at times and a resource hog, so it's turned off as well.
So, when you get down to what 99% of the populace uses a PC for: checking email, browsing the web, writing documents etc, Win2K and XP are effectively the same.
And, if you remove all those new services from XP, you'll get a system that's almost as fast and stable as a properly configured Win2K system.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
whatcouldyourepeatthatpleaseimnotsureigotthemiddlepartwhereyouhadthecomma
Oh...that's right, you didn't have a comma.
I do, however, find it humorous that after that insanely long, head-asploding run on sentence, with not so much as a breath, you did find the time to end it with a period. Good job.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
I can understand your point of view on it being soap-opera like, but there is a reason.
I am quite happy for Twitter to post on Slashdot. I generally ignore him because I think he's a liar, and did so quite successfully for a number of months when I thought he only posted under the two pseudonyms. That's gone up to at least 4 now, though, and I feel that if he's going to continue pretending he's different people, then others should know which people they are so they can talk to him with all of the information.
That's all I have to say on it, really.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
And I appreciate your calling it to the collective attention. He might be a liar, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day (that's still plenty of wrong, sure).
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
There was a five year gap between XP and Vista. That's 60 months, or about 3 Moore's Law doublings.
Vista should therefore reasonably expect to be able to use up to 4x more resources to perform OS duties. It would be nice if the OS were to become relatively more efficient, and I'd argue that it has. Vista does not use four times more resources than XP did. Heck, does anybody else remember the days when we'd have to reboot a Win95 box in DOS mode to play certain games because there just wasn't enough memory to run both Windows and a single demanding application?
Wish I had adopted a "wait and see" approach to Leoptard. Would have saved me from having to wipe my Mac.
The real irony of it was I actually had to PAY for Leoptard, whereas Microsoft's service packs are always free. At this point, I'm wishing I had just purchased another Dell.
The Slashdot take on Vista is that it is a failure in the marketplace. Post numbers that suggest otherwise and the geek shifts his ground.
>"What's the point? Why would anyone want Vista? A more fancy UI and some nifty media enhancements? Sorry, it just doesn't make sense".
That's what they said about XP on this very board. Just 2000 with fisher price colors, now everyone is in admiration of it. Funny how that works.
While we're swerving off-topic to correct innaccuracies:
>> I dont see the difference between this OS and XP
> Except for say UAC, all the DRM and the fact that the thing runs slower on more powerful hardware then XP?
and the totally re-written kernel?
>> Of course if all you read is slashdot you would also think that NT is just a unix wannabe
> It employs many design concepts from *Nix that weren't present in 9X so in a way it is very similar to Unix. Now granted there are only a finite way of solving problems present in Windows 9X so making it more Unix like is one of the ways to make it more secure.
About the only Unix-like feature in NT (compared to 9x anyway) is pre-emptive process scheduling. In fact NT 3.51 was the bastard offspring of VAX/VMS, although I suppose VMS has some common heritage with Unix way back in the mists. And then NT4.0 went all monolithic and thready, so moving even further from Unix.
>> and that XP is just 2000 with fisher price colors
> It is, it is basically Windows 2K with a shiny theme on it much like how Vista is like XP with a bunch of crap thrown on it and a shiny GUI.
No doubt the big 'selling point' of Vista is the eye-candy, but it sure ain't NT6.0 (in the way that 2000 is NT5.0, and XP is NT5.1). Actually I believe Vista is a whole new bloodline: like DOS -> 95 -> 98 -> ME (-> extinct); then (VMS ->) NT -> 2000 -> XP; now Vista (sine prole).
If Twitter quit posting on Slashdot, you would have no life. All you do is troll him with your obnoxious bullshit. I've never seen anyone more obsessed.
Its the fact that people are using vista. Thats what he should really be recomending people not to use.