Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
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!
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.
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...
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...
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.
"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!
2 It's a post from Twitter.
3 It got the green light from kdawson.
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'
"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!
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.
Ah, Windows Vista...
Why didn't they just call it "Windows ME, the next generation"?
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.
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.
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.]
Vista Ultimate on 1GB?? You shittin' me right?
For a dev machine running that combination even on XP I wouldn't go with less than 2GB... given Vista's memory footprint you'd probably want 4GB for that.
btw. Have they fixed JIT in 2008 (is that out of beta yet?). Certainly on VS2003 and VS2005 UAC simply hoses any attempt at debugging, because it blocks it.
Also btw. this is *nothing* like the early days of XP. In those days only the devs hated it because of its stupid interface and they way they moved everything around. Now you've got ordinary non-technical people literally calling their techie friends and begging them to install XP on their new machines because nothing works.
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!
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 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?
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.
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();