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The Death of Windows XP
bsk_cw writes "Although many Windows users intend to hold onto their copies of XP until it is pried from their cold, dead fingers, Microsoft fully intends to phase out the OS in favor of Vista. If you're unwilling to move to one of the alternatives, and really don't like Vista, the least you can do is be aware of what's in store. David DeJean offers a rundown on Microsoft's timeline for Windows XP, why the company does things that way, and what you can do about it."
Ha, still using Windows 2000 here.
I think Vista will be fine for most people once powerful hardware becomes more common. People I know who have it pre-loaded on their new laptops seem to be okay with it.
This will be very satisfying. I've had so many people tell me they absolutely HATE Vista, but they're stuck with it when they bought their new computer. They frequently ask me to put XP on, no matter what it takes (buy it, hack it, put their mothers key on).
Killing XP off finally, while I love the idea of killing Windows will really hurt Microsoft. Since people hate Vista so much, they'll start being more open to other options.
Maybe it'll mean friends and family will be asking me to do more Linux installs. I like those better anyways, they go a lot faster and they don't involve 2 hours of install plus 2 days of Windows Updates.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
yah it's a memory hog, but that's compositing window managers for you, including Compiz. Most problems are with backwards-compatibility, which you shouldn't really expect anyway. The whole OS is more mature; it just seems to be more complete than XP which had half the OS tacked on in service packs. Yeah it's bloated but I have the hard drive space. I have no issue with vista.
31 June 2008, 8:00 AM EST: Nasdaq and NYSE both crash as the big three PC vendors and their suppliers discover nobody's willing to buy a PC any more.
Midmorning Bill and Steve get a call from Ben Bernanke.
Afternoon DHS executes warrants on One Microsoft Way. Attorney general reopens antitrust investigation. Steve gets a call from the IRS regarding the structure of financing for one of his sports teams.
Evening: XP gets a reprieve! We're all friends again.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The last version of Windows I could tolerate (and I'm being generous there) was 2000. I moved to XP for compatibility but fortunately you could easily change the look and feel to be exactly like 2000 (not like some kid barfed a stomachful of crayons across the screen).
Fortunately things have moved along and I am only depended on one or two legacy apps. I can do everything else on a Mac, and those couple of apps run fine in Parallels and I'll never have to upgrade them.
Thank goodness I can just ignore all the hoopla about Vista. "XP" should be dropped from this story's title - _Windows_ is altogether in its death throes.
Try PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu or Fedora and let me know if you still think composting window managers are slow or that you need 10GB for an OS install.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
Microsoft should recognize the Vista fiasco and then put all the eggs in the Win7 basket.
I can not imagine all corporate users migrating to vista just because MS want so.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
does anyone here still think win 3.11 is better then win95? Vista is a better OS then xp, more secure and more stable. at some stage in order to improve software you must break compatability and increase features, build a fucking bridge and get over it people.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I have Vista installed on my PC. When I bought a new hard drive, I found out that I could not simply activate Vista on my PC (with all the same hardware as before, except the drive itself). I reluctantly called Microsoft support, who asked me for a 25 character (from memory) code, and then read me out another 25 character code which I had to enter to activate Vista.
Wow. Just for changing my hard drive.
I fully intend to downgrade to XP in the near future.
-JB
"I love deadlines. I love the "whooshing" sound they make as they pass by." - Douglas Adams.
I'm sure he means that he runs W2K in a virtual machine. That won't solve the Pownabilty problem but it will run with reasonable speed after you reload your snapshot. Runs great on PCLinuxOS using Nvidia drivers and VirtualBox.
Yeah, yeah, I know Nvidia is non free. So is Windows! If you must run it, and I can't imagine why, this is a way to do it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
There's plenty of good reasons to bash microsoft; this isn't one of them.
---Dedicated Ubuntu user
Unless MS is really going to *sell* users on Vista, trying to force them off XP is going to represent an opportunity for someone else, among them:
(1) Microsoft Systems shops that have the ability to provide support or
(2) Competition that's open source ("Don't like being moved off your platform when your *vendor* decides it's time, not when you decide it's time? When you have the source, you can maintain or hire someone to maintain it as long as the cost is worth it to you.")
Tweet, tweet.
Umm.... what about the Eee PC? It's creating a new, very successful niche in the computer industry in the last six months, yet it's not powerful enough to run Vista. Is Microsoft going to end licensing of XP for the system, and give the whole market to linux? That would seem like an utterly stupid move on their part.
I really don't think Vista is going to take hold of the market as a whole. I think(Been proven right thus far) that more and more people will simply Migrate to the Mac as they replace their machines rather than going to Vista. Mac gives users the flexibility of running Windows if needed and it has higher stability to boot. Sure, you pay more. But you get more value in return. You get server quality hardware on the inside. And, since no server level hardware manufacture is going to be caught dead with crappy drivers. You'll get better driver support to. With the end result getting you a high stability, smoother running machine.
Given that the article sites June 30 as the cut-off date for pre-installed XP from the likes of HP and Dell, does anyone think that these guys are going to see a bunch of sales right before that date? I know that my brother's business needs about three more laptops and that when he hears that June 30 is the drop-dead date for XP machines from Dell, he's probably going to start ordering.
I wonder if XP will get a reprieve before or after the 30th of June. It _will_ get a reprieve. That's my bet. I just don't know for sure when.
Of course, I'm feeling a bit smug typing this on an Eee PC without Windows and knowing that my wife is about to buy a MacBook. I use Windows at work, but in every place where we make the decisions, we've given up on it.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
This incipient consumer rebellion is a relatively new phenomenon, even in the short history of PCs. For most of the '90s, Microsoft couldn't bring out new products fast enough to satisfy customers.
This is sort of empirical proof, to me at least, for what I have long thought, and I'm sure a lot around here thought as well. The days of an OS revolutionizing or vastly enhancing the way someone, especially a consumer, computes are long behind us. The OS has suffered from feature bloat for forever, and for the most part, a successful new OS is one that just doesn't hinder the work to be done. For most people, their computing needs have been satisfied, but they are pushed into a perpetual cycle of upgrading for upgrades sake. This "rebellion" is a symptom of this. XP satisfied people, and some of them are starting to realize what the terms "lock-in" and "monopoly" actually mean.
We're coming to a point where freedom in software is gaining in market value. I know it's cliche, and people have been spouting it for a over a decade, but I suspect that the general populace has come to a point where they can see that dollars and cents are in favor of not being tied to a corporation that makes money by selling solutions for the same problems over and over again. I don't know what iteration of "free" software will fill this void, but this mess with XP is not good for them. It won't be the downfall of Windows, they are far to crafty and firmly positioned for that to happen. However, the old business model of theirs is losing its effectiveness.
I hope I'm right, but even more so I hope I'm not turning into a linux nut that shouts "It's the year..." every time MS slips up.
I got a catholic block.
Oddly enough, quite a few people still have Windows 98 running (I have a Win98 machine in my basement doing my CDEX ripping).
When Microsoft turns off the activation servers, that basically REALLY means the end of WinXP... or is there a chance, any chance, that Microsoft will release a super-secret "unlock all" patch in 2014 that will allow XP to be activated. I am pretty sure the answer is NO, but I can still hope.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
Nope, Windows 2000 native on Opterons and Athlon64s, with a variety of Nvidia video cards, works fine and runs plenty fast. There is no malware of any kind. Seriously, I've audited the crap out of everything, it's clean. (Auditing in this case means: Hard drives physically removed and attached to non-networked machines with fresh OS installs, run the latest malware scanners from the CDs. Always comes up clean.) The Windows machines are behind Linux firewalls and basically get nothing installed beyond a few commercial 2000-era applications, plus the latest Firefox.
A whole article, with very informative and concise information about support and sales cycles of XP, but in the end the conclusion is you can put it off but you will bend over and take it.
THIS is what's wrong with proprietary software. If Vista were better - more compatible with existing software, less buggy, less DRM crap, I would WANT to move. I don't, but in the long run I don't have a choice. If you'd told me 3 years ago I'd be fighting to keep XP, and buying older hardware to ensure support for it, I'd have laughed at you.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Long live XP
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
The only reason I keep XP around is for gaming anyways. I'm figuring by the time XP really goes the way of the dodo, the 3d support for Windows applications will be there. If that's some version of virtualization, or wine having DX9 support completely that's what I'll use. Both of these options are "mostly there" now. VMware does some 3D, and wine can run a lot of DX9 stuff, just not what I need.
I used Vista, and I don't really like it. I like Ubuntu, but there are some things like games, that it doesn't run. I feel choosing the OS, then the applications is like putting the cart before the horse. When I can run rFactor(a PC driving sim) in Linux, I can migrate to it. I fully believe I'll be able to do this before XP is dead.
Once June rolls around, Microsoft will roll out a two track policy: Vista only for consumer desktops, but a choice of Vista or XP for businesses "for a very limited time only" (i.e. indefinitely, until Windows 7 is nearly ready). They'll explain that some of their business customers need continuity in their desktop deployments blah blah blah.
In other words, Microsoft will blink. But consumers will still get the shaft unless they desert to another OS.
-swami
Windows XP is far from dead, Microsoft will still be supporting existing installs when they usher Windows 7 out the door. In this regard they are similar to the support given by Ubuntu on some releases. Vista is simply better however. I have had it installed for about three months now and the transition from XP to Vista was a heck of a lot less painful than moving from 98se to XP. Vista is XP mark II, at its core it provides at least as much as XP and in addition it overhauls or adds new systems. Memory utilization is high compared to XP but thats because Vista actually puts wasted memory to use as cache (like an article for a Linux subsystem the other day). Aero is a nice facelift, Direct X 10 while questionable as a Vista exclusive also adds some nice new effects, prefetch and other cacheing mechanisms automatically tune the system over time, and the new security model while minorly problematic with older software (sometimes an old program needs to be run as administator) is a welcome addition to the number one target for malware. As Windows 95 wouldn't run well on a 486, Vista won't run well on hardware that is sufficient for XP. I have a dual-core 3.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, and an HD2600XT and it is the equivalent of Win95 with 16MB and a Voodoo 1. Quake in that mixture is replaced with Bioshock. Objectively Vista when run on appropriate hardware represents progress - I'm sure a decade from now the operating system of that time will have hardware requirements that dwarf what exists today and be very shiny but for now Vista on a new machine isn't a bad thing. Especially with Service Pack 1.
Shh.
I'm still running Windows 2000 professional and have no desire whatsoever to migrate to anything. I'm 25 and hardly ever play games anymore and mainly use my system for fairly mundane things like email, finances, sound recording, porn lol, and burning cds/dvds. With a gig of ram and a 2.2ghz amd processor my system is very fast when running a minimalist windows 2000 setup as my system only uses 128megs of ram for base processes. My system never freezes or locks up unless I'm playing some buggy game like Half Life 2: episode 1 or 2. In terms of security I use truecrypt to encrypt a partition with all my sensitive data. It's annoying that truecrypt does not support system partition encryption for windows 2000 but I found a workaround by placing all of my sensitive data on a non-system partition including my firefox and thunderbird profiles. I have a fast backup routine using ghost that only takes me 15 minutes to back up my system. I don't really need anything else as long as programs like firefox and thunderbird continue to be updated for win2k systems which I don't see why they won't. I went through a linux phase where I ran red hat, then slackware, then debian. It was interesting and fun as a kid but my career does not really involve computers so the time consuming tinkering that came with running a linux system had to go. So far it seems only games utilizing the newest version of directx are out of reach by running windows 2000. As long as I can run the newest versions of popular programs like skype, firebird, thunderbird, open office, I don't see myself changing until my hardware dies and I can't purchase equivalent hardware to replace it but I don't foresee that happening for at least another 5 years.
Shilling your own posts. How lame.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
FTFA:
Booom, that was a 486. BOOOM, that was a PI. BABOOMBA, that was a PII with a chrome-spoiler VGA card. How we lived through all that, no one knows.
TFA goes on about Microsoft's problems supporting "a tangle of versions and upgrades" which is almost as funny given when you consider how well DOSBox, Wine and virtual machines deals with all the same problems with none of the inside information. No, it's not new because IBM did Win3.1 inside OS/2 very well. Me thinks the "support" issue is created rather than natural.
But yeah, Windows is dying.
No calls now, I'm
Oh, well, here we go:
DOS is a new-fangled OS. Run CP/M. Completely malware free, since none of the malware is compatible.
You know who benefits from this? Apple. Expect Apple to really crank up the "move to the Mac" ads.
Vista's reputation is justifiably bad, and I'm never buying a copy. If I suddenly need a new Wintel machine, there's always someone like tigerdirect that has overstocked machines with XP pre-installed, and they'll probably be selling them for a year after XP is pulled from the shelves. But I think MS is only going to cause customers to truly hate their guts for this. They'd be smarter to allow XP sales until Windows 7 is ready (assuming they don't fuck that up.... a big if).
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It seems very obvious that the people who developed Windows Vista don't never to use their own product. What else can explain some of the stupidest fucking product decisions ever made? It's just unbelievable how Microsoft's latest and greatest operating system took a giant step backwards from Windows XP. The fact that network transfer speeds from Windows Vista over gigabit Ethernet averages around 5MBps for me when similar transfers from my XP machine if six times faster. This is after I installed SP1 and I'm not running multimedia applications in the background. Before SP1, the transfer speed would sometimes go down to 1MBps. Just unbelievable. WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING? I've got a couple of notebooks running Vista. Whenever I first turn them on, their hard disks whir away for 10 minutes or so doing the shadow backup/system restore thing it does, WHETHER IT'S RUNNING ON BATTERY POWER OR NOT. Way to go, dumb fucking shits. This is after I figured out how to stop its incessant disk defragmenting. The tech. press has said it much better than I could: Microsoft broke tons of existing applications without adding any real innovation to Vista.
I started working with Ubuntu pretty seriously a couple of years ago, and at this point I can say that Ubuntu is my OS of first choice, and I have no plans to adopt Vista. Ever.
I may get forced in the Vista direction at some point, and I'm pretty sure that at some point I'll be forced to at least support it, but so far I've been able to pretend it isn't there and just hope for it to go away. My company is the main locus of such possible force, but they are so far mostly avoiding Vista. Unfortunately the in-house Linux that they prefer is Red Hat... It might be more secure, but I feel Ubuntu is much closer to being ready for the masses to work with.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
First I'd like to preface by saying if you LOVE Vista and you truly believe it's better than WindowsXP, then good for you. You are a minority according to everything I've heard and seen. (Does anyone have any studies, polls or surveys backing up either position?)
This is no classic example of market demand guiding any invisible hand to deliver. People want it, Microsoft says "too bad!"
Would anyone care to speculate for logical reasons why Microsoft would take this approach? I'm really out of ideas on this matter. Most people can agree that they dislike the idea... even people who LOVE Vista can't actually approve of Microsoft forcing people out of something they like can they? (Don't answer that, I know they can...)
So why are they doing this?
XP users will still get security fixes until 2014. By then MS will probably have put out windows 8 and everyone will be complaining about that. Just like everyone complained about 95, 98, ME, 2000, xp, and vista when they came out, and yet continued to buy MS's operating systems.
Be realistic 13 years of support is amazing long, and if that's not enough XP for you there isn't any rule that says you can't continue to use it after they stop patching it.
I bow before your perversity. Where do you get drivers?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216934&cid=17629948
The key is to install FireFox, never use Internet Explorer or any of the apps that use it (like Outlook), and don't ever expose it directly to the Internet. (The one time I did, it only took an hour or so to get clobbered by the Welchia worm.)
My wife runs XP, but mainly because that's what came on her laptop. The only real advantage I see to XP is the fast user switching. But she's never going to be a Vista user: she just bought an iMac, to run Final Cut on for her video artwork.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Wonder how many tons of green house gas will be emitted as a result of this decision? Minimal hardware configs:
Vista - 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, DirectX9 graphics ~ 300 Watts
XP - 233 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, SuperVGA graphics ~ 100 Watts
W2K - 133 MHz CPU, 64 MB RAM, VGA graphics ~ 60 Watts
Linux - 386 CPU, 16 MB RAM, VGA graphics ~ 30 Watts
Balmer claims Windows will hit and installed base of 1 billion this year. Assuming half the Windows PC are turned on at any given moment, this means that XP => Vista will consume an additional 0.5 * 1e9 * 200 Watts => 100 gigawatts of power. By comparison, the Three Gorges Dam in China is expected to produce 12 gigawatts, the largest nuclear plant (Kashiwazaki-Kariwa in Japan) produces 8.2 gigawatts and the sum of all window power worldwide is estimated to be 94 gigawatts. So Microsoft phasing our XP is going to consume as much energy as all of the wind power generated worldwide.
Statesman
"Auditing in this case means: Hard drives physically removed and attached to non-networked machines with fresh OS installs, run the latest malware scanners from the CDs. Always comes up clean."
:)
Well, if you remove the network and add a fresh OS, of course it is going to come up clean. Especially since you have no data to worry about.
I have an Athlon 6K / X2 / X64 with 2GB of high-speed DDR2 - XP PRO X64, and Vista X64 in a dual-boot configuration. As the phrase went, You can get XP Pro out of my cold, dead hands. The only thing I see is the eye-candy. If you could sell me the candy for thirty bucks or so, why do I need an unstable, ANNOYING operating system that has a lot of driver issues? P.S., SP1 hasn't FIXED A DAMNED THING!
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
TFA goes on about Microsoft's problems supporting "a tangle of versions and upgrades" which is almost as funny given when you consider how well DOSBox, Wine and virtual machines deals with all the same problems with none of the inside information. No, it's not new because IBM did Win3.1 inside OS/2 very well. Me thinks the "support" issue is created rather than natural.
Microsoft made the tangle themselves, and continue to propagate it. If Vista had been a logical upgrade to XP most people would have upgraded before now, but they are continuing with the bad practices that got them where they are.Find coupons in Greeley
So have we decided 'yay or nay' if I need to adopt a new screen name?
;)
No, I think ill still be administering XP boxen for until 2010 at least
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
Hear that, everybody? Twitter says that all Windows users are perverts!
I was doing that on my recording machine... until I couldn't use my new Alesis 26 input firewire device, due to lack of drivers.
STILL waiting for Linux multimedia to not suck.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
And that is what, exactly? I've run Windows for years without being "powned", as you put it.
Win2K drivers are more common than Vista drivers.
Unless, of course, you want to run shiny new things. I'll bet he's not running any games past D9 on it.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
without shoving all the useless stuff down my throat;
that actually boots and runs faster than XP on my current, reasonably up-to-date hdw?
I'll be your fanmonkey for ever /or until the next "upgrade" / and we'll go around the dance floor once again.
Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people!
That is why you should always either build your own or have someone build one for you.Not only do you get to choose EXACTLY what comes in your pc,but even the $199 Athlon special I built for a guy last month came with a cd that had Win2K,2K3,XP,and XP64 as well as Vista drivers.I would much rather build my own and decide what OS I want,than get saddled with Vista.And if I can still get motherboards with Win2K drivers without even having to hunt I have no doubt that I will be able to get XP drivers with my motherboards for many years to come.Hell,it was only a couple of years ago that I finally saw the motherboards stop shipping Win98 drivers.But that's my 02c,if you want Vista,just buy an OEM.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'll bet he's not running any games past D9 on it.
Since DX10 is only available for Vista, I'd say that's a pretty safe bet.
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
XP Enterprise License. Thanks for playing!
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
The Death of Windows Vista "Although many Windows users intend to hold onto their copies of Vista until it is pried from their cold, dead fingers, Microsoft fully intends to phase out the OS in favor of Windows 7. If you're unwilling to move to one of the alternatives, and really don't like WIndows 7, the least you can do is be aware of what's in store. David DeJean offers a rundown on Microsoft's timeline for Windows Vista, why the company does things that way, and what you can do about it." P.S. Since when did XP become like the greatest OS in people's mind?
Before they're going to get people to switch to XP, Vista needs to stop sucking. People will pirate XP before they'll switch to Vista. Talk about a "bet the company" plan....
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
One could say we in the free software business are our own enemies. We shoot ourselves in the feet all the time. Imagine...after all this time, with the [free] availability of specs of every kind, there is no decent ODF application beyond OpenOffice.org...which at version 2.4, still sucks bigtime by the way! Do not think I blindly support KDE because KDE's KOffice is a joke!
By the way, some author outlines ways for that other environment to improve.
This will be a great opportunity for Apple IF they stop requiring consumers to purchase a very expensive dongle in order to run their OS.
The latest version of OS-X can be had for approximately $100. This OS is, by most accounts, far superior to Vista. But in order to run it, you have to purchase a dongle from Apple.
Apple's cheapest dongle is close to $1000. How can it be so expensive? Because they won't sell you a dongle by itself you see. They'll only sell you a dongle when it is attached to their branded hardware. This hardware is not substantially different from that of any other standard PC, but it is the only hardware that includes the magic dongle. This gives Apple a monopoly...though not the kind they derive any actual benefit from. This monopoly doesn't help them dominate the market, but instead only serves to exclude them from it.
The result? Microsoft continues to win and Apple continues to lose.
No other outcome is possible when Apple forfeits the game.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I think the GP meant that the non-networked machines had fresh OS installs.
This sig is neither interesting, nor humorous. Including meta-humor.
I switched to Vista because I know I will need to learn it to support it. There are a couple of new feature of Vista that I like, but they're not enough to keep me. Due to Vista's lack of complete support of Windows administration and RSAT isn't anywhere in site. Today was the last straw when Vista became useless for about 30min including reboot attempts.
My company will not be moving to Vista. In fact, the issue with not being able to get a copy of it will be solved by moving the userbase on to thinclients until Microsoft gets Vista's act together. It's still not stable enough, there are no admin tools, it's severely bloated and the learning curve is too high for the users right now. I have never seen a base OEM install of an OS banging away at the swap file for no apparent reason with 4GB of RAM.
> June 30, 2008, Microsoft will stop selling XP through its retail and reseller channels ... PCs with Windows preinstalled).
..and XO, of course which also won't come out until after that, and any other MS won't want to see only have Linux on and can't cope with Vista.
>
Except ASUS eee which will only start selling with XP pre-installed _after_ June.
So, what will Dell, Gateway and HP say about that ?
you know, I wonder about that. Wasn't there some story about "pre" D10 dev kits being made available to various select developers that ran on XP?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
How about that Commodore OS that's vying with that 'Nukem game for terminal Limbo?
If they ever get it released, it would be really funny to think about a malware operator encounter it.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Mac and Linux.
I too am using Windows Me, and as long as I can continue reading Slashdot with it, until December 22, 2012, I'll be happy.
Linux is more of a server os.
Reactos dual booting with Haiku is a better idea.
I can't speak to the Radeon GL Application switching to Mesa as I use Nvidia cards and don't have that issue.
But Flash 9.0.115 on Linux is TERRIBLE. That plugin is so unstable it crashes Youtube every other video and eats RAM. This isn't Linux's fault its Adobe's.
But there is a work around. Extract the FLV and use ffmpeg or mencoder and change it into another format, it looks MUCH Better. Just get it out of that horrid flash plugin.
When Microsoft moved from 2000 to the spyware platform (online registration first, then what?) of XP, I decided not to move with it. I never found a reason that really forced me to upgrade. Because I decided to move to Linux, and put the W2K box in a closet running a VNC server. I hardly ever need to fire up the W2K machine at all.
These Microsoft "up"-grades pushed me to using Linux full time. I bet that I'm far from alone.
--
make install -not war
I ran Vista on my laptop as an experiment from RC2 until a few months after release, and eventually I got tired of the quirkiness and went back to XP. Then, I finally got around to learning my way around Linux after many years of procrastinating, and I don't know why I didn't do it a long time ago. I'm so much more productive than in Windows, and I just can't live without multiple workspaces and a powerful command line anymore. Sure, there's Cygwin to satisfy my command line lust, but it just doesn't feel right to me. I feel claustrophobic in Windows now. I only still have XP on my laptop so I can pretend like I boot into it and play games on Steam every now and then, but I do that so little that I'll probably wipe Windows off of it completely after I build my next desktop (and run XP and Linux on it).
I might perform another Vista experiment in the future to see if I could tolerate phasing XP out of what little of my life it still affects, but XP just doesn't feel as antiquated compared to Vista as 98 did to XP. I'll probably keep running XP when I need Windows until there is a highly compelling reason to do otherwise, because right now there aren't any. Who knows, I might skip straight to Windows 7 if they manage to make it not terrible. Then again, the moon might grow legs and do a dance, too.
EQ is the only thing holding me to Windows now.
Openoffice 2.4 has added the features I wanted and seems to mangle my existing huge documents very little so that I can patch them in a few hours (these are 150 page documents with hundreds of pictures). The smaller documents I only need to change the table of contents and indices column count.
P2P- Azureus.
Sound- Audacity.
Graphics-- still an issue- but Draw looks decent. I need a good pixel editor tho.
Browsing-- Firefox.
Just do not see the point in upgrading again and paying money again. I guess I'll get some $399 PC with Vista or Windows7 but no more $1899 (heck last XP pc was only $1199).
Focusing my dollars on retirement, boardgames, my house--- do not see putting out $3k for a computer each year like I used to.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Win98 actually supports the Windows Driver Model (WDM) so in theory it should work with Win2K drivers.
Although why you would want to use Win98 is beyond me.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
When you post stuff like this people are just going to point out the youtube.com video WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL. 3 million people have seen it. Why haven't you? It's from February of last year. Compiz has improved some since.
Here is Compiz running on a seven year old 800 MHz PIII with 128 MB of RAM. It runs better than Vista did on the last dual core notebook with 1GB I tried it on, and it looks better too.
Here's Compiz running on an eee PC. Isn't that sweet? I hate lugging around 15 pounds of kit and the eee will be my next PC purchase. It weighs two pounds. Did you hear they're only 300 bucks (No, not the software. The whole thing!)?
I hear Vista comes with a few docklets or widgets or whatever they're calling them now. Ubuntu comes with this small collection of neat little toys. I didn't count them. I think there's thousands of them in there. People might find one or two interesting things in there.
Now what were you saying again? Oh, yeah,
Now you're projecting. In design are you? Apparently others are more giving. Perhaps that's because what they get back is "Progress" and that's good value.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
VMs and emulating the A: drive doesn't help if the auditing office insists on receiving the data via snail-mail delivered floppy (no joke!)
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Moved to Vista Business back in November. Runs perfectly on a 2.5 year old X2 4800+ system (Vista 32-bit) and a new Q6600 system (Vista 64-bit). Once I showed people how well Vista runs they stop spouting off on how bad it is. Two friends asked me to build them Vista gaming boxes over the holidays. No issues so far.
Most non-Windows people don't know it (usually fanboys to real experts are the only ones that do), but the Windows kernel is really a tiny little thing. Easily 90% of "Windows" is nothing but bloat (especially the shell, god I hate Explorer and I say that as a Windows user).
Take a gander at MinWin. It's what Microsoft uses for development of Windows and related tidbits. 25 megs on disk, and uses less than 40 megs RAM. That's with networking as well. Eric Taut demoed it at a lecture once with it acting as an HTTP server.
Why Microsoft doesn't develop MinWin into someting the end user wants that will also save their ass from a lot of the anti-trust problems they've been having lately is well beyond me. Be so much better for _everyone_ (especially Microsoft) if they would modularize it.
But anyways I digress. To answer your question, they'll probably make a Vista Lite or something for EEE PC. After all, they don't need some of the features of Windows anyways. The only real problem for it is Windows Aero anyways, and I know several people that have no interest in Windows Aero in the first place.
Wishful thought of the year: I hope Microsoft steps back, takes a look at all their problems and what the competition is doing, and then realizes the solution of their problem is to market MinWin and modularlize Windows. Then you can also satisify the people that want their right to choose what goes on. You'll also do better in the Server market if you DONT INCLUDE EXPLORER.EXE and make it REALLY command line, like MinWin.
Like I said, wishful thinking. Microsoft needs a massive change of upper managment. Most of the C(x)O's and their underlings are killing the company.
No matter it is XP or Vista, my HDD is gonna get filled up soon, cause my lappy is regularly updated.
We're getting ready to gear up a CG company in the Fall. In the short term we need 50 workstations and eventually we'll need a 100 just for the first phase. I'm unhappy with our CG software so I've been researching options. I had largely settled on one that is Windows only even though I like Mac after using it part time for a couple of years. Hearing that will will be forced to use Vista has made me rethink my choice. There's equally good options in Mac and there are just too many issues with Vista. We do game development as well and our game engine is Mac so it was a tough call sticking with Windows so this is more than enough to push me back to Mac. Between Mac and Linux we'll just need to keep a couple of PCs around and for now they'll all be XP machines. We have our current equipment and we'll pick up a couple of cutting edge systems before the end of the year and ride them until they die. Hopefully by then Microsoft will have a better option to Vista but we'll be 95% Mac/Linux by then and I doubt we'll switch back. No wonder Mac is now 14%. It'll pass 20% easy by next February and I see it hitting 25% before the dust settles. Microsoft may have finally broken it's own monopoly.
Let's suppose that the OS, the Browser, and the OfficeSuite make up the core of the standard work features. MS played a mighty game of lockin, but their powers are definitely fading.
... USERS now. 20 years ago movies like Revenge of the Nerds were necessary because average *people* were NOT *users*.
I installed the alt. browsers first, because web surfing is the least intensive. I was following the OpenOffice through a couple incarnations, and I distinctly recall Version 1.x had a terrible interface. I made a mental note to give it a year. I don't know how they got past lawsuits by making the interface of 2.x so similar, but there it is. I just saw the article that the 3.x revisions are due out in a few months, and I'm really excited about those.
The OS is a much harder switch however. I'm slowly prepping introducing our company's first workstation linux box for my desk, but those weired politics still exist. "So, your freebox just tanked again?..." However, the rumblings are definitely appearing that Vista has some serious flaws. Our internal lead IT guy tried his damndest to be pro-Vista, but still has to do some stuff on an emergency copy of XP.
If the mindshare wave ever cracks and everyone starts playing with linux flavors, it's all over for MS. We joke about "average users", but average users are
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
In 2014, Microsoft will stop all support of Windows XP. Oh noes!
You guys DO realize that this would be like someone running Windows 95 today, right? XP came out in 2002 and was replaced in 2007. A full seven years after that, XP will be phased out. There will likely be two major OS releases, plus Vista, by the time that happens.
Not to mention this has already happened with every other Windows release to date, including Windows 2000. In fact, Windows 2000 (Professional and Server) officially lost Mainstream Support in the middle of 2005, and its Extended Support (security updates only) will end in 2010. That's a 10 year lifespan.
The real story here is that Microsoft has committed to supporting an OS for 12 years after you paid less than $200 for it.
-David
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
At the risk of trolling, who cares? Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing since Windows 3.1.
By now, I think people have figured out the proprietary software game. You pay for gloss, for the "privelege" of upgrading every few years. People who run Windows by choice do so because they want to have the latest thing. They don't care how well it works; they don't care if it's slow, or needs constant updating, or has umpteen million security holes.
It's what everybody is using. Period. And that's reason enough to use it.
You know, we could go on a rant about other operating systems that are more secure, run faster, have better legacy support, more features and options, etc...
But it doesn't matter. The kind of people who run XP by choice don't care that Microsoft is going to discontinue support. When that happens, they'll just shell out another few hundred for a brand new PC. Why? Because it's new, and therefore better.
It doesn't matter. Nobody cares. Linux will still be around for those of us who actually care about the quality of the software we run. And Apple will still, gladly, cater to those who are fed up with being abused by their technology vendor. And no one will care - not Microsoft, not Apple fanboys, not Linux zealots, and least of all, Windows users. They've become so accustomed to computers as slow, unreliable, and insecure, that honestly, they won't notice any difference.
Because Vista is new, and therefore more advanced....
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
No shit Sherlock. You should have been around when the same was happening with Windows 95. Acting surprised over a prodcut cycle is definately not news.
Ideally I would run the scan by unplugging the network cable and booting from directly the malware-scanner CD. Unfortunately nobody makes such a thing -- it's like the "antivirus" companies don't really care about reliability. Running the scan on the target system itself is pointless, since some system-level malware could be tampering with the results. That's why I take the hard drives out of the target systems and attach them to a known-clean system (fresh OS+scanner install, no network) to run the scan.
But really the elaborate malware scan is just window dressing so I can provide some tangible evidence that my systems aren't infected; I know they're clean because I keep them clean on a day-to-day basis by not installing tons of random crap I found in the net.toilet, keeping applications and plug-ins (and pointless upgrades!) to a bare minimum, and keeping an eye on the security bulletins. It's not rocket science, but it is kind of computer science.
It's because Microsoft isn't concerned with attracting customers as much as it is leaveraging them. We're all commodities, Folks!
Guys, really you need to work on this. You need a consultant. This crap is totally transparent.
Why use the free office package when your friendly neigborhood geek will install a hacked copy of Office from some random website? Really? Do you need to push the platform that hard? I don't think so. It makes you look weak.
So. I can be had for money, it just takes a lot of it. I'll teach you how to do this properly. Think about it. ;-)
Help stamp out iliturcy.
XP will live forever . It may not be supported with service packs, but you will still be able to use it, and purchase it.
:)
http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx
XP licenses can be transferred indefinitely. You don't have to ever buy another XP license as long as you are getting rid of the older machine. As for drivers, there will be drivers for XP for at least another 10 years. I can still download Windows 2000 drivers; it's a safe bet there will be Windows XP drivers for quite a long time.
I also find it ironic that XP is about to be "dead" and certain manufacturers still don't have XP 64-bit driver support.
Activation has to be provided by Microsoft for as long as their are stickers out in the "wild". There are no contractual provisions for Microsoft to NOT provide activation. At some point, Microsoft may elect to just allow any request to be activated. Those service centers which run 24/7 giving out activation codes when too many activations have been performed on the license don't run cheap. There is no alternative however. To not provide activation denies a customer the ability to run the operating system that they paid for.
Unless I am really clueless, which is possible since I do have some pretty spectacular "DUH" moments, the EULA does not provide a time frame or conditions for them to discontinue activation.
It will be even worse in corporations, since there is a pretty good rebellion going against Vista right now in the workplaces. That is just what I can see, I am not trying to start a war here
My point though is that corporations are even more aware, and more sophisticated about licenses, COA's , CALS, TS CALS, etc. and are far more likely to transfer a XP license from an older machine to a newer machine rather then purchase a newer OS like Vista.
So no, XP is not going to die. Far from it. This is just another article stirring up blogs like rocks hitting a wasp's nest.
From TFA:
So will there be any way to get a copy of XP after June 30?Yes, the same way there has always been a way to get it: warez. And of course existing copies still work just fine so keep transferring the license as long as your total # of PCs doesn't go up. For private parties this is usually the case. Businesses will have to fend for themselves.
If you want to continue using XP, what problems will you face?Well the same we've always had, and for me that hasn't been many. Sure the registry gets annoying after a while but out of all the years it's been available I've only reinstalled twice I think. That is much less frequently than older versions. It is stable and runs well. I'll be running it for a long long time. Security patches will continue to be released, not that I install them anyway (I have SP2 installed right now though).
If you buy a PC with Vista installed and decide you want XP instead, what are your options?For one, don't buy a PC with Vista installed. Build a PC or have someone build one for you if you are a private party. For another, keep your existing license of XP to transfer to the new machine or pirate a copy if you are the type to do that. Again, businesses will of course have bigger issues. Hopefully they will begin investigating Linux prior to realizing they don't want to be forced to Vista.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
All the motherboards and adapter cards I bought last year came with Windows 2000 drivers. Has everything become XP/Vista only in the last 3 months or so?
Disclaimer - Windows sysadmin for +15 years:
.1 version to offer virtual machine support and speed features for the i386 chip, both of which resulted in a major shift for PCs, and better running software.
With only one major exception (Windows ME - long may it roast with MS Bob in the 5th layer of Hell), I've always been a proponent of upgrading to the latest version of Windows, if only because if actually offered some strong incentive to do so (either for the end-user, or the person who had to support it). My observational timeline:
Win 3.0 -> Win 3.1 -- Windows 3.0 was the 1st 'real' version of Windows as we know it, but to took the
Win 3.1 -> Win 3.11 -- Forget the 'For Workgroups' crap, the real reason to jump to Windows 3.11 was for native NDIS support for networking. This in the days when Novell's ODI layer was still ruling the roost was a welcome change.
Win 3.1x -> Windows 95 -- Quasi-32 bit app support and a much improved UI guaranteed that Win95 was going to be a hit. While not perfect, it made/started many of the inroads that Windows users take for granted now (Plug & Play (kinda, although not having to worry about IRQs was a wonderful thing), valid TCP/IP support (with a functional DHCP client), simplified printing, Device Manager view of hardware resources, etc.).
Win 95 -> Windows NT 4.0 -- I'm going to skip Windows NT 3.5 & 3.51 because, well, everyone else did too. The concept was there, but it took dropping the Win95 UI onto NT to make the OS something that non-geeks could use without having to have a subscription to TechNet. This was the 1st true 32-bit MS OS that also featured some semblance of useability (see again the updated UI), descent hardware support, vastly advanced networking support (DHCP & WINS, connections for more than 10 clients in Server version, etc.), improved hardware managment, Server and Workstation versions etc. All-In-All, an OS that lived long after its successor (or even its successor's successor) was on the scene.
Windows 95 -> Win 98 / Win 98SE -- Most folks who were on NT4 did not jump to Windows 98 / 98SE with good reason - it was still partially 16 bit. But for those folks on 95, moving up to 98 (especially 98SE) was worth it if only for the additional hardware support that 98 offered. This was around the time that USB 1.0 started to make the rounds, and while some vendors offered a flavor of USB drivers for 95, the majority made much better versions for 98 / 98SE. Minded, the ridiculous web-desktop idea that MS had was gash, but it was just a matter of turning this off to get a pretty solid OS that could run 32-bit apps, the latest hardware, and a heckvalotta games.
(Anything prior) -> Windows 2000 -- The promised land at last: True 32 bit OS with the hardware friendliness of the Win9x series. While the initial stab at AD in the Server version was lacking in a lot of areas, it held the promise that the next version (or a service pack - also a 1st wit Win2K) would solve the issues.
Win2K -> WinXP -- Not a lot needs to be said here. Improved hardware support, an improved security model a-la SP2, and a generall solid OS all the way around.
Which leads us to -- (Anything prior) -> Vista (whatever of the 9 flavors you think you need) -- Wow, let me get this straight: I need 2GB of RAM and a video card with 128MB just to make the OS work? While the UAC was a good concept (borrowed heavily from OSX / *nix), it is way too intrusive, to the extent that the average user is going to ignore the warnings after the 1st 50 (which will happen the in the first 3 days of getting a new system). At this point, there's not a lot of hardware that doesn't work w/ XP (or even Win2K for that matter). So tell me, what's the reason to upgrade?
Let's not pretend this is something specific to Microsoft. Apple, Debian, the BSDs...everybody phases out old versions of the OS after some time. Microsoft actually supports their operating systems for a very long time.
On the other hand, an upgrade from one Microsoft OS to the next is often much more disruptive (to your system and to your wallet) than upgrades to some other OSes. For example, Debian upgrades are free and usually very smooth.
Plus, the free operating systems are largely mix and match. You don't have to accept the package as a whole. With Apple and Microsoft, for example, if they decide to litter their new OS with DRM or other junk, your choices are to accept it or to not use the new OS. With, say, Linux or OpenBSD, you can just leave out the parts you don't want (usually by simply not installing them. in the very worst case, you will have to edit the source and recompile - but at least you _can_ do that).
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
TRS80 Model 102 FTW!!!
http://www.club100.org/
I actually have one, wrote a BASIC program on it today.
The only guy left that's Windows only is about to get transferred. Windows only geeks aren't looking attractive when there are so many flexible people in the labor pool. It turns out the Linux geeks make better Windows geeks because they can think clearly, remember stuff and in general have better process.
I imagine in the next few years committed Windows only geeks might get hard to find, outside of the "fries with that?" subset at least.
I'm assuming POS in this particular sentence does not mean Point Of Sale.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I'm 30 years old, and I've been using Microsoft operating systems for most of my life, since MS-DOS 3.x. A decade ago, I used to say things like "I won't even touch an Apple computer unless it's "touching" with a hammer as hard as I can". I hated macs and continued to do so, vehemently, up until about four years ago when I needed to get a mac to run proprietary graphics software. Less than six months ago, I shutdown my trusty PC rig that I mad maintained for a good five or six years, and put it to rest in my closet. I haven't looked back.
The simple fact is that Microsoft really f***** up with Vista. I won't be using it because it's garbage. If the next version of Windows is good, sure, I'll consider coming back over. But for now? No way.
This story isn't unique to me --- several of my friends who also grew up as PC nerds have also "switched" and have been singing ever since. I'm not a fan boy, but it's just absurd how awful Vista is. MS needs to wake up and hire some professional UI, design, and experience engineers to come in there and clean house. If they already have some, then the red tape is preventing them from doing good work. EIther way, the result is poor craftsmanship.
You could always use ClamAV installed on something like SLAX, that would be dead simple to set up and keep up to date; the reliable (ie. transparent, not "we tested them somehow, just trust us that it was a good test") malware scan tests I've seen tend to place ClamAV pretty high, somewhere between Kaspersky and Norton. I swear Avast made a live disk, some BartPE-based one I think, but yeah, it's a bit odd/suspicious that the major antivirus/antimalware companies don't make live disks . . . perhaps one could check to see which ones work well in WINE :)
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
I work for a fairly large hardware/software company. MSFT is killing XP in another way as well... they've stopped shipping the crash reports that the OS collects. They still ship Vista crash reports of course. Meaning drivers and hardware compatibility/support will only get worse for XP as time progresses. Internal QA is good, but those crash reports gave info on every conceivable hardware combination imaginable (and some unimaginable).
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
show me a linux distro that compets on price with security updates for even 5 years, let alone 12.
Take your pick:
http://distrowatch.com/
The DirectX SDK comes with a "debug" software driver for both DX9 and DX10. Essentially, you use this driver to test your application to see how it's supposed to look - since it's entirely done in software, random graphics glitches caused by drivers aren't a factor, so you know if it's your fault or nvidia/ATI's.
The debug driver supports DX10 and works on XP, you can install the SDK right now and try it out for yourself. Catch is that you'll get about 0.0001FPS rendering little more than a rotating, untextured cube. Still, you want DX10 on XP? You've got it.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Which is why every computer shop, or company worried about security, or technician, should make their own.
It's pretty easy actually - through about a dozen methods, including *nix or eComStation live boot disks with ClamAV, et al installed, or using BartPE and building the tools into the ISO, or using Hirens and doing the same, or... well, you get the point... the list of choices are plenty.
And with a rewritable, it is pretty easy to update the disk every day by dragging the updated definitions/apps into the correct directory (or with the tiny cost of CDs, burn a new one every day - or with a good selection of NIC drivers on a Bart disk, let the programs auto update the definitions through the Internet before it even touches the machine's hard drives).
I agree it would be kinda nice if a company made such a product - but what company out there does a good job at dealing with all the threats possible on a PC? You'd still need multiple solutions... the only one I know of that comes close is Spyware Terminator since you can enable ClamAV support. But even so, I prefer the "multiple solutions to each issue" method, namely because even with every program updated, while there is a high level of overlap (eg: they all agree on/find 99% of the viruses and spyware and trojans on a computer; each finds just a few more that the other programs in their category dont). As a neat example, one machine that the customer insisted we could not wipe and needed to clean (5 digit list of infections) required 6 different software packages to find them all... oddly there were two viruses that everything but an outdated McAfee found (we checked, they definitely were infected)... yet ClamAV and 3 other packages missed it. On the other hand, we clean one of our customer's systems with ClamAV to grab everything that Norton and McAfee miss.
So, I prefer the "roll your own" approach :-) And I am guessing that anyone who needs to do true scans/cleaning of their systems also use multiple tools if such issues are critical to them.
I know they're clean because I keep them clean on a day-to-day basis by not installing tons of random crap I found in the net.toilet, keeping applications and plug-ins (and pointless upgrades!) to a bare minimum, and keeping an eye on the security bulletins. It's not rocket science, but it is kind of computer science.Sadly, as anyone who does this day in and day out can tell you, that is not enough to ensure a system is clean. Windows (any version, any service pack) does not need any user intervention or use to get infected. I'm not saying it is horrendous (nor am I saying it's not - not making any statement either way)... what I am saying is that machines do get infected even with all updates installed - and no user in front of the keyboard.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At least my ME still works
Yeah. We call those things microkernals. As opposed to fat monolithics.
Course, Linux is that bastard child in between. Monolithic'y when you KNOW you need that scsi card, but plug-in-goodness for that USB toy.
History is repeating itself. This is the whole 98-ME situation all over again. ME offered nothing. I thought it was fine, some had problems. So people stuck with 98. XP came around and it wasn't worth the upgrade. It made more sense to replace the PC. Some were replaced, others left at 98. Same thing will happen with XP. People will likely hold off in order to avoid a mixed environment and all the problems that involves. Microsoft will try to force people to Vista. I'm sure lots of things won't work in Server 2008 with XP. I'm sure anything earlier than XP SP2 simply won't work. The choice will be to spend money or keep what is working. You will be a lot of after market XP systems get gobbled up. Probably see an increase in piracy too. The real issue with Vista is that it is a solution looking for a problem. Microsoft is trying to invent that problem.
A paranoid firewall should be enough to prevent that sort of thing... unless a fresh install of windows actively downloads malware without prompting, but that would be ridiculous.
Software patents delenda est.
I just crossed a new milestone. Got Mac OS X 10.5.1 running on a homebrew quad-core intel box the other day. Promptly installed VMware Fusion and created a virtual Win XP environment. Also downloaded several linux VMs and fired them up. I enjoy the elegance of Mac OS X as my main environment, but when required, I can drop into WinXP without any drama.
Really, though, I can't see why I would benefit from installing Vista at this point.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I use W2K on my home and work PC. Security? As long as it is supported by MS(security patch until 2009) and behind my via epia linux firewall(heavier one at workplace) it is pretty safe from being pwned. That leaves just two security hole, the 'malicious ActiveX' problem and 'user installing random crapware' problem, which is not just W2K's problem(and I'd rather say, it is not the hw or sw problem. It's 'something between keyboard and chair' problem) and can be mitigated by education and providing Limited user accounts(My wife is power user with privilege-escalated IE icon(used in internet banking with ActiveX plugin) in menu, My son's is just an user with limited privilege).
I don't do serious gaming, but I'm content with mame(including that 3d hw accelerated game starts with 't'), warzone2100(3d accelerated too), dosbox(MOO, MOM, settlers etc.), snes9x, freeciv, wesnoth, UQM, Privateer remake, starcraft. My little sons are pretty satisfied with flash games, UQM, and snes9x too.
Drivers? This PC is AMD 690G based, not that old PC. Though they aren't officially supporting W2K(they didn't mention it at ther web support site), the driver CD included in the mainboard just installed amd graphic driver(catalyst ver 6.12 or something with DX9) fine. Yes, generally W2K is pickier than WinXP on CDROM on newer IDE chipset(especially non-intel chips such as highpoint, marvell) when it is about to be installed, but it can be solved by copying install files when it is on previous OS(win98 etc) or copy it directly in dos mode(I386 directory) or sata-to-ide adapter(I've bought 1 for $5) if you have IDE cdrom and intel chipset board.
Workplace? We've standardized on Office2K on W2K too. With firewall, automatic update, Limited user account with some exceptions(those nasty ActiveX my customer requires) and AV product they are pretty safe too. And I can freely relocating OS, App license to machine to machine due to non-activation status of these OS/APP. My desktop PC OS is debian. But I use W2K as KVM guest OS when Internet banking is needed(those fscking activeX plugins!). The only application I've encountered that can't be installed on W2K is CATIA V5 R18 which is fairly new.(It could've been installed on W2K until R16). Even if W2K in office use would become obsolete, there are many older PCs 'waiting with honor' to be installed with W2k on working area in my plant.(they are pentium-PIII era w9x based pc managed with PXE network booting and dd imaging. Funny? they works pretty well if they are used for their dedicated purpose with their own legacy apps and restricted net access)
Conclusion? MS can theoretically grab WinXP OEM from your live hands when your motherboard dies, but they'll never be able to pry W2K OEM from my cold dead finger. By that time, it'll live on virtual world created by my penguin god which MS can never dare to touch on.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Would I ( and I write software for a living) take the retrograde step to programme in .NET?
.NET for something that has to run on HP/UX? Oh silly me, .NET is Windows only.
.NET is the be all and end all of software environments is (IMHO) the comment of someone who is not fully aware of the world outside the desktop.
all my code is capable of running on a variety of Operating Systems and hardware platforms.
Yep, I use ( amongst other things) Java.
Why would I even consider
Don't get me started on that pile of festering dung called Mono.
I get huge amounts of reuse on my code just because of the platform agnostic nature of many of the tools I use.
Ok, I have to admit that most of my stuff resides in the server room but to say that
I do most of my software development on Windows ( XP or Server 2003) and deploy it for final testing on the target platform as required.
Then there is AD. (Sigh) I have lot count of the support calls I have fielded in the past 5 years as some MCSE bozo has changed some setting in AD and messed up a whole load of backend and often mission critical systems. In one case, the customer business was less that 1 hour from being told to stop trading when we fixed the AD issue. In my opinion, this alone makes AD not fit for purpose. I can often persuade customers to put certain servers outside the control of AD just to eliminate this kind of risk.
That my 0.2sum take on this stuff.
Clickety-click... winecfg and set version "Windows Vista".
No, wait! Better use "Windows 2008" - Vista seems to go the Windows ME way.
Disclaimer: I work for M$ft (but in no way should my comments here be considered representative of Microsoft) Windows 2000 was pried from my cold dead fingers only because XP is required to VPN into work (some days it's nice to just work from home), but XP isn't as bad as I'd expected. Vista on the other hand, well, I crawled through a lot of broken glass working with IE7 Beta2 and I will NEVER willingly install it on any system I need to actually do something other than run office and surf the web. Windows7, on the other hand, looks very promising. Although, the WinMin kernel and such strongly reminds me of something some Finnish guy slapped together when he was in college... Enough background, to my point. One of my biggest problems with Microsoft is how as soon as there's a new platform, all development and marketing effort is put into it. Currently I'm working as part of an application development team for a Windows Mobile product. We're targeting WinMo 5 + .Net Compact Framework 1.0 because that's the largest existing install base out there for Windows based SmartPhones and PocketPCs. When we run into problems and post questions to mailing lists we're regularly getting called idiots for not using Compact Framework 3 or WinMo 6. Sure, what we need to do would be easy using those platforms, but NOBODY sells a phone with that already installed and it's asinine to expect users to upgrade just to run our application.
You can still buy phones with WinMo 5 and .Net CF 1.0, yet there's no internal support to speak of for either technology. I shudder to think what hell 3rd party developers must be going through. The platform teams at Microsoft tell us to use .Net CF 3, when .Net CF 2 isn't even standard on the market yet.
For that reason, I've decided to go for upper management rather than technical individual contributor just so I might have a chance at changing some of these fscked up ideas, or at least attempt to give developers some room for better practices and refinement of technologies rather than jumping to the latest and greatest when there's still lots of room for improvement on what's already in the market.
DONT PANIC
Mcafee disagrees.
AVG disagrees.
Or... if you don't want those, you can just make a "live cd" using any of the countless utilities out there for it.
Or if you're feeling crazy, toss vmware onto a knoppix dvd and boot windows from either an image on the dvd or boot it straight from the drive, isolated in vmware.
I love free market.
It was forcing Microsoft to come up with Vista, because every company on Wall Street need to come up with something new to sell, in order to meet next quarter market expectations.
Not that Microsoft had any grand, pressing ideas for a new OS after XP. They just didn't.
But they had to do it anyway, because that's the name of the game. Playing the "secure computing" card was obvious and Apple pretty much defined how a desktop OS should look like these days. So MS dumped Vista on the market - and the market realized within days, how uninspired, annoying product Vista was. In a few words: it does not offer anything pressing to get it - it's almost the opposite.
To add to Microsoft's free market suicide, their other flagship product, the new Office has the same disease. It's just nothing there to upgrade for. And if you take a look at their ENTIRE product line, it's all the same bad news for them. No wonder they are desperate to buy Yahoo or anything that gives the impression that they are actually still alive.
Since customers are not willing to voluntarily buy into the latest Microsoft products, MS really has no choice, but to pull the plug on XP and all the others.
But this can be done probably once or twice only. It's a public disaster already, it reveals that the software emperor does not have cloth... and now wants customers to bend over for the old fat naked dirty man... and pay for the "experience".
Well... Mr. Software Romeo - this is not love for us... this affair really has no future.
We love free market, because eventually it kills the old ugly fat bastards - even if they used to be the rich and famous in town.
PITA. PAIN in THE ASS. You read me. First I wanted to install an application. I tryed to fudge with the network things to get it work with my german t-online dsl. Did not work. After roughly 10-12 hours of googling, trying, rebooting, I gave up. So I used my XP PC tzo download .tar and / or .deb files. Then with an USB transmit it to the Ubuntu PC. First application was cdemu. I tryed the .deb did not work. Googled. Oh so the vhsa whatever is not working has to enter cryptic command to restart it, then restart a daemon. Did nbot work. Then somebody commented in a CDEMU forum to just do a freaking mount -o whatever with the ISO. THAT did work. Then I tryed to install the application on the ISO. Spent hours. Did not work. Then finally found some post hinting that the app is not supported in any new kernel stuff (I guess I can give that in being my fault for not googling first to see if the app I got was supported or not). So I started installing an alternative instead. Have to compile it... Right now I am trying to find out why there seems to be some problem with it, some dependency with libgcc whatever. I left it for next week end. I thought, of playing a few of my oldies. I have on my XP box DOSBOX. Installed it worked like a charm without fudging anything. But with ubuntu .... Could not get-apt (remember : no network, meaning I am screwed). Turn out after installing a few app, that i have NO FREAKING MIDI SOUND! WTF ! I am now in the process of downloading timidity and some freepats.
I might be a rare bird to install some of those app, but plain freaking dosbox was runnning out of the box in windows, and I have to install and download third party stuff in ubuntu. Argue as much as you wish, but I am nowhere to recommend ubuntu to anybody without a lot of time and knowledge.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If the corporates move to operating system A, the employees would be more familiar with the benefits and quirks - ie it would become a habit for them, and that's what's going to decide which OS is going to stay.
Can't see Hindi?
Awesome. Thanks, AC!
dummshit! i run win2k in custom written 64 bit drivers and still pork women i draw in photoshop 5! learn how to use win2k n3wf4g!!
Nah, unless they're just lazy/want you to upgrade, I'm almost sure any XP driver should work on 2K as well.
All your base are belong to Wii.
If microsoft stated in their trial that earlier versions of windows were their main competition, then are they not trying to control this competition by removing it. I never could figure this one out.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Just finished playing a quick game of "Master of Orion" on my own Windows 98 machine, yep.
True, it's not a PC I use much anymore, but it still does get me onto the web if needed. So I can buy parts or find solutions when my more modern machines are out of service. Don't email from it, and don't do anything much with it except play a couple of those old legacy games now and then, so it's not really a target either for most hackers I wouldn't think...but it's there if I'm really stuck.
Somehow I just can't see myself saying the same thing about a "good ol' Vista PC" ten or fifteen years from now.
It's here. It was 1994. It helps to not drink too much beer before you decide to replace your OS.
Patience, friend. You'll get it. We're here to help. A great many people on Slashdot are here to help you through this difficult moment. Even though we're not the official support channel for your software we're eager to see you have a good experience with it.
Now, start with describing the platform you installed it on and we'll go from there. We'll need to know either the OEM make and model or at least the model of motherboard you're on. It would also help if you could be more specific about your German DSL provider. Who is it, and specifically which type of DSL? If it goes too long we can go to better forum for this.
One last thing... if your DSL isn't working how did you manage to post this?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Vista is not bad once you start using it, sorry MS h8rs, but I don't want to go back to XP now.
I'm sure you had all the same comments about XP when it came out. Vista has yet to blue-screen on me,
I've seen XP + bad-drivers do that on a regular basis.
Actually, that's not really true. WDM on Win98 is only supported for a few device classes. It doesn't support video cards, printers, scsi adapter, network cards or filesystems, or anything on a non plug and play bus. Video devices are completely different between Win98 and NT based OSs. Scsi and Network cards each have a minport architecture that was portable across 16 and 32 bit OSs backi in the Win98 days but Vista and XP have a very different version of NDIS than Win98. Mostly WDM was a way for people to write USB drivers that worked on Win98 and Win2K. But USB has changed a lot since then, and so has WDM. Finally, lots of modern USB drivers will use WDF in kernel mode or are user mode code that uses WinUSB.sys, and neither of those will work on Win98. In fact neither of them will work on Win2k either.
Other Win98 'drivers' are actually just hacks - code that must run in Ring 0. They are VxDs, a system that was originally designed to virtualise devices underneath multiple Dos boxes. Antivirus software and the like used this environment to hook filesystem access for example. Obviously this can't work on NT since there are no VxDs and the filesystem layer is completely different.
Even between successive releases of NT based OSs, there isn't any guarantee that drivers will work. Most people know this and write their inf files so the device will only install on one of the OS versions they tested.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
as that has the UI you want. (and I agree with you, MS has fragmented functionality which was located at known places in XP to unknown menus, has created an insanely unusable explorer etc.)
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Speaking as somebody who always used to say "Vista and it's DRM and god knows what else? Never.".
Then I bought a new laptop, and it came pre-loaded with Vista. So I got it dual-booting with ubuntu no problem, and then I started thinking, well, we're going to have to support it at work, (most of our customers are on XP or 2K, but they're gonna buy new PCs eventually, right?) so I figured I'd better get used to it, if nothing else, for the 10% of my time where I have to coach a brain-dead end user on something.
Overall, I can't find a reason to hate it, try though I might. Can't get it to chug no matter what I do. Now, a couple of qualifiers to my grudging endorsement.
1) this is a dual core processor with 3 gigs ram and a nvida 8600 GS. So on a entry-level system, it probably sucks like an electrolux. It shouldn't require a PC that can run Crysis just to get a freakin' OS to run without irritation.
2) My girlfriend's dad has a similar laptop, and while it runs ok, he's baffled by the arbitrary changes to the user interface.
3) If I try to think about how much I'd pay for the things I like about vista, I come up with a figure of about 10 bucks or so, i.e., on a par with what I'd pay for a game on my cell phone.
4)I haven't been down the road of things like replacing my hard drive yet, but if I have to call Microsoft to get permission to run it on a new hard drive, I'm gonna chuck vista in the river, metaphorically speaking. Same goes with DRM stuff.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
Sadly, as anyone who does this day in and day out can tell you, that is not enough to ensure a system is clean. Windows (any version, any service pack) does not need any user intervention or use to get infected. I'm not saying it is horrendous (nor am I saying it's not - not making any statement either way)... what I am saying is that machines do get infected even with all updates installed - and no user in front of the keyboard.
Rubbish.
You would have the fastest windows operating system, if you could get all the drivers to work.
A logical upgrade would be a Linux flavor with a DirectX 9 Compatible Wine.
When that come you either switch to Linux or move to Vista for DX10 support.
What rubbish. So many know-nothings on /. say "Linux is a server OS" when they really don't have a clue.
;o)
Linux can be whatever you want it to be.
Debian is a great foundation for how many distros I lost count. Ubuntu is not really advertised as a server OS and every PC I have tried it on works better than whatever MSOS it had before. Even when I go back to XP, it is so much slower and buggier that Ubuntu makes it look like a real dog, which really opened my eyes coz I thought I had stripped my XP install back to the bare minimum and got it going as fast as it was possible to get that computer to run. Even my download speeds have increased 150-200% since using ubuntu and this is a consistent factor, not a transient connection issue. I know linux is not for everybody, but it's mostly those types that think because they know how to work the OS, they know "all about" computers.
What I say to these people is "You think they use windows to run the space shuttle?" hell no, but they have used debian in the past
Debian FTW
Thanks for the info. I thought what I read was a little iffy.
Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game
I use Vista Ultimate 64 on my "production" rig. It has a Core 2 Duo, 2 gigs of RAM, 320 GB H?DD, and ATI Radeon x1950 PRO. It's a fairly powerful machine, and I can say for certain Vista not only feels more stable and faster than Xp did, but it feels a whole lot nicer and elegant when I do my work, and I could NEVER run Xp on that machine again. I don't get much use out of laptops, besides sitting in my living room in front of my new Bravia in the morning before I leave for work, or in general when I want to get out of my office to chat with freinds on one of my messenger apps, or perhaps check my email when I'm out and about. So when I wanted a laptop, I got a Pentium III 850 MHz Dell Latitude C800. With 2 batteries, I clock about 8 hours. With 256 MB of Ram, Xp runs very nicely on this machine (only 10 gig HDD though, but it's enough). I use Office 2007, AIM, WLM, Internet and Mail on this machine. Xp runs very well, and I could do without constant updates to the OS, as most of my apps will be supported on this OS through 2014, when security updates end. By then, I'll most likely have splurged on a new notebook, (as well as a new desktop). When that happens, it will probably still run Xp, just older software, and become a last resort. (Unless by then a Linux distro will ever boot on it).
Ideally I would run the scan by unplugging the network cable and booting from directly the malware-scanner CD. Unfortunately nobody makes such a thing
TRK? Admittedly, the virus scanners it can pull down and run probably aren't as ideal as dedicated anti-malware/spyware software would be, but it's a start.
You Microsoft guys who love XP really should get behind the ReactOS guys. Open Source is the future. Help those guys who are trying to redo your system from scratch. Then you'll always be able to have it and it won't matter if Microsoft is trying to end-of-life it or not.
We BSD/Unix guys did that when AT&T got really stupid, so learn from history for a change instead of trying to reinvent it! Be real men and women and take the future into your own hands.
Is there something I'm missing here, besides obvious cases of Stockholm Syndrome?
You Microsoft Windows XP guys have a choice other than Microsoft, keep your system by supporting ReactOS.
Not as sad as you though, wanker.
I have a friend who is quite familiar with computer and Windows XP into Linux. Of course because of his familiarity with the OS he doesn't quite feel the need to move to another OS, especially because he has some software that wont run under Ubuntu except with a little help of virtualization.
That's the most common problem Ubuntu and Vista have with the XP userbase - it's widely known, proven, manageable and maintained. Although this might mean reformatting the neighbours drive twice a year besides the monthly cleanup of trojans and worms. For an administrator, XP is a necessary evil.
For me, it's an old OS. After trying out Ubuntu 8.04 beta I'm getting a feeling that it will beat the crap out of XP usability-wise. The "CLI gaps" are being closed more and more thoroughly. I haven't touched xorg.conf for months now and pppoeconf will become a nice memory with 8.04 (for desktops, of course). Simplicity of use is ridiculously easy in Ubuntu and all we need now is a theme which will be appealing to the blueish XP crowds (although I somehow got fond of the Human theme).
Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse delendam.
Apple's cheapest dongle is close to $1000. How can it be so expensive? Because they won't sell you a dongle by itself you see. Troll much? Apples cheapest 'dongle' is their $599 Mac Mini - its right there on their store, I wonder how you missed it during your oh so obviously indepth research.
In fact neither of them will work on Win2k either.
KMDF (the kernel mode variant of WDF) is availible for windows 2000 now.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
We really need a -1 (Asshole) mod just for twitter.
I have multiple PC at home (3 from various ages), one being an Windows-XP PC, I use that to post and download the TAR/DEB files. The laptop I am trying to install all the stuff with, has got gutsy gibbon installed on it, and is a gericom silvershadow 2. The provider is T-Online, but I have no router, I directly connect to T-DSL (T-Online DSL) with the windows program.
Right now if dosbox could function with midi sound I would be a very happy man.
What forum would you recommend for ubuntu ? Also , more importantly, I used to program in the last 15 years in assembly (386) and pascal and fortran (f77 and hpfs on mainframe mostly). What book would you recommend me to start up on programming in c++ under linux ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
...is won by Linux!
What's up with everybody? are new shiny things so much important to people? I got dizzy just watching all the spinning and rotating objects in the "WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL". If I ever had such an environment, the first thing I'd do is to deactivate all the glitz...
My own PCs (including a year 2007 dual core) are still running Windows 2000 (Professional), because I really dislike the idea of an operating system with "product activation". On this one we might actually agree, given your general attitude toward Microsoft ;-)
But otherwise the oldie holds up better than you suggest:
-With current patches and a DSL router using NAT, I had no intrusions for a few years.
-After updating a few registry settings and libraries, most current software runs fine. Here Windows 2000 shows its age, but it is still manageable.
Nevertheless, Windows 2000 will probably not be on my next PC a few years from now. Reasons are:
-expected lack of drivers, but I can't really fault hardware vendors for that. Windows 2000 is dying out.
-inability to fully use modern hardware. My current rig is pushing the limits of Windows 2000, the next one will exceed them.
-Linux is improving year by year. I'm already keeping an eye on Ubuntu Linux and consider the operating system as good as Windows or better. If it wasn't for a few Windows games Ubuntu might already be my main OS.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Apple Corporate came out to discuss using their products in a state government environment. The brough up the reduced power consuption over they typical Dell, but they also mentioned that companies are buying the hardware _just_ to run XP. One reason? Some manufacturers are intentionally releasing Vista drivers only (Sony, I'm lookin' at you.)
It's gonna be pretty odd when Apple is one of the few vendors that won't lock you out of XP.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Five years longevity guaranteed.
Where 12 years would be from the very first copy to the EOL, so if you bought it after three years (when it became generally useable) that's not 12 years, it's only 9.
And because you're using an open system, you can fix the security issues yourself. By upgrading the one element that has the hole, removing it or getting it fixed yourself.
For as long as copyright exists.
Show me a windows that will be supportable in 95 years...
Company I used to work for is STILL shipping product based on DOS 6.1x! Granted this is an embedded use of the OS in a turnkey system. I think they bought the rights to ship as many copies as they wanted. (From IBM not M$).
Now, if you manage to shield a Win98 box from the external world so that it doesn't need these 3rd party tools running, then sure, you'll have a "GDI load" similar to what such a machine saw on 1998, and it'll be usable. But that requires discipline and tons of good sense on the part of the user. Anything else, and it's either too risky or quite literally impossible.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
OSX
Can Slashdot please stop advertising Windows products.
Thank you.
For the student or low end user, they won't really care or notice much. I know no one in my family will. They already hate computers. For people who need someone a little more effective, it'll be Ubuntu or Linspire. Also I'm guessing that corporate users will get an additional year's reprieve.
So this is why Micro$oft keeps pushing this downgrade called Windows Vista? Earlier this year, I finally upgraded my computer to Linux because I got tired of slow Windows XP.
\
Depending on jurisdiction, the EULA may not be legally binding. There is at least one case in Germany, where the courts found unbundling of OEM Windows versions legal, despite the EULA explicitly saying the opposite.
Of course, Microsoft could always put a version without "Mandatory Activation" on their download servers if the hassle of supporting old customers gets too big. It is not like you cannot get a cracked copy now, so I don't think the amount of piracy would change much.
C - the footgun of programming languages
...for exactly the reasons you outline. When Win2K was getting towards the end of it's life, we looked at XP. Prettier, more drivers, no real extra corporate functionality though - we'll skip XP, thanks very much. We're now at the point where 2K goes EOL and out of support, so we need to move - we're going from Win2K to Vista. On 65k desktops and laptops. Argh.
"But that binge left Microsoft with a huge hangover. As the new decade started, it was supporting a tangle of versions and upgrades. Then the Internet bubble burst and PC sales slowed. New products like Windows ME weren't as well received as the older ones."
This gives the impression that ME wasn't well received because of lower PC sales. In fact, ME wasn't well received because it was a complete piece of shit. I hope the editors make this correction soon.
Mcafee disagrees.
AVG disagrees.
Or... if you don't want those, you can just make a "live cd" using any of the countless utilities out there for it.
Or if you're feeling crazy, toss vmware onto a knoppix dvd and boot windows from either an image on the dvd or boot it straight from the drive, isolated in vmware. I really don't mean to nitpick. I fully agree running an Antivirus on a compromised system is definitely not to be trusted. Even if the virus doesn't interfere or play with the results, Windows probably won't let you clean it if it is in memory. Symantec disagrees Says it doesn't support NTFS. Mcafee disagrees. Says it doesn't support NTFS. AVG disagrees. Runs Windows PE (Pre-installation Environment?). I assume this means it'll do NTFS, but I can't say anything here.
I remember a few years back (pre-Windows 98) a bunch of friends and I had a boot sector virus. I don't recall what it was called, but it transmitted itself by floppy disk. If you simply accessed the disk you became infected. We all had AV software, even if it wasn't 100% up to date, it was harder to do since none of us had the internet at the time.
We knew about the virus, but we couldn't do a damn thing about it because when we had AV software to clean it, it would not go away since it was already in memory!
The fix was when one went out an bought a new copy of McAfee which included a system boot floppy to scan at boot time. Cleaned it up in a jiffy. Passed this around (with the write protect tab switched to On) to clean up. Once we had it off the hard disk, cleaning the infected floppies was done by the resident scanner whenever it encountered one.
Do any of you actually try a OS before you start bashing it? Really do you think that as programs get more sophisticated the OS must do the same. This means the foot print must grow. I know Linx is the Massiah, but lets face it, it will never be an everyday ordinary person OS until the GUI is just as bloated as MS. So with that said try Vista and realize it is not perfect, but there has never been a perfect OS. If you still do not like it that is ok , but at least you can complain about it from First hand knowledge instead of other peoples rhetoric.
when the windoze box finally kicks the bucket, make a switch and don't worry about being led down a dark alley by some microsoft minion.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
One word.....LINUX !!!
You don't need particularly fast framerates just to test that it's rendering correctly. Once you know your pixels are in the places they're supposed to be, you can exit and run it on a real card. .dll's.
Plus, it's tied into VS in the usual fancy ways, so you can do some nice real-time debugging and such, things that just aren't possible with the release
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I dont really see the dilemma here 2014 is a long way off and if you work in the tech industry I can count on my fingers how many times I have called Windows for support in which the main issue was re-installing licensed software on a newly formated computer. If you are that scared I will give the template slashdot answer "switch to Linux."
Why is it that people can't just freakin' accept that other people can run a Microsoft OS? Once again a Linux elitist/snobbish post from another person that does more harm for the cause than good. Not to mention the troll billboard signature.
"At least I can generate cryptographically secure pseudorandom numbers.. http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/1528211" - by Brian Gordon (987471) on Monday March 24, @10:00PM (#22852434) Homepage So can I (Windows Server 2003 SP #2 fully hotfix patched user here IS why):
:)
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9048438
"Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and the not-yet-released Windows Server 2008, however, apparently use a modified or different random number generator; Microsoft said they were immune to the attack strategy."
(Hmmmm, that seems to show that VISTA is immune to PRNG weaknesses also!)
APK
P.S.=> Sorry Slashdotters: NO "Anti-Microsoft/Anti-Windows" F.U.D. allowed... had to point this much out, so you don't go & misinform others (like usual here)... apk
"Apple's cheapest dongle is close to $1000"
$599 is indeed close to $1000 according to certain definitions of the word "close". $1 is also close to $1000 by certain definitions of "close" too.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I work for a school system with 21,000 student/teacher machines. We are just now moving to XP (we REQUIRE stable platforms) and some of our machines choke on the amount of software loaded with XP on a 512MB box (5 years old). For us to go to Vista would be a FOUR YEAR conversion and cost much bucks for the hardware requirements. Remember we are funded from YOUR taxes so we have to get by with minimum platforms, unlike a business.At home I have a high end machine with a vista license running XP, and will NEVER run Vista. Oh, one more thing, with multiple (up to 200 user profiles in the labs) user environment and the user controls in vista, it is my belief that Vista would be a HUGH impact in our "customers" usage especially with the k-4 grade users. Try vista with your kids..... BTW we support the 21k(soon to be 22k) machines with 4 engineers, 12 Network specialists and 12 PC technicians (28 people/22000 machines=786 machines/person in 76 locations)
Maybe, but I think a far more important impetus for them to try de-bloat and lighten up is Windows Mobile - currently there's talk about convergence between mobile platforms and PCs (and the convergence will probably be pushed from the 'wrong' direction from their perspective, i.e. the phones, where it's harder to abuse heavy dominance) - I think they see the biggest longer-term threat as being Google Android (and the fact that it's Java-based, like the iPhone and BluRay, only makes it worse).
The fact that MS's front page is today pushing Windows Mobile in a big way adds further confirmation of this for me. Cellphones are the next big 'platform war'. They've been trying for ages though to make a decent Windows Mobile and have mostly just floundered.
There have been many reports of (Microsoft) games, when handcrafted to not check for DX10 to work just fine on DX9
New things are always on the horizon
There are choices, you can pay the apple tax and go mac (or even run it on non-apple hardware with a little tinkering) and Linux had matured to a point that the slightly savvy user would be fine. Let it die, vista is not the answer though.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Vista or Wine.
Why did you move from XP? I see no significant reason. I have vista professional on a laptop I bought and when I finally got all the spyware and HP overhead crap and turned off all the extras it runs decent, but I never would have payed extra money for the OS had I the choice It sounds like you are willingly forking over money for it, so I'm very intrigued...why?
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Identical laptops with 2ghz P4's and 1gb RAM, and 100+gb hard drives, and DVD/CD burners. One of them is running Fedora Core, and the other is Windows XP Pro with all its shots applied. I have absolutely no compelling reason to change it and I even have seen Vista run on this same laptop (swappable hard drive caddies), and was not at all impressed. In fact, rather bummed out that I spent money on an OS that ran like crap, was missing many apps that are included in XP, and cost more than XP. Worse yet, many of my standard operating software applications would not run on Vista. Program development is a joke. Frankly, I think we'll leave things alone. Old rule of thumb: "Don't fix it if it ain't broke!"...
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
You would have to be awfully ignorant to think that HW makers stopped supporting W2K in 2000. W2K has essentially the same kernel as XP. And XP is still the most popular desktop OS, by a wide margin.
Besides, W2K is very fast even on older hardware. I have a 1ghz/512mb box running W2K, and it's very snappy. It runs all my HW and SW, and has no problems with stability or security.
So why should I "upgrade?" It would just be a pointless expense. And why would I want to fight with all of Vistas horried DRM, and other annoyances?
I came across this LiveCD from spotmau yesterday http://www.spotmau.com/products/package/full.htm. I never tested it(didn't get a chance to see if it was on pb yet) and I don't work for them or have any affiliation. But it claims to be a livecd that fixes registry entries, spyware, cracks forgotten passwords. The link I submitted is the one product that does spyware, the root of that site lists the other products. It was an embedded ad while browsing http://www.pendrivelinux.com/.
'Ideally I would run the scan by unplugging the network cable and booting from directly the malware-scanner CD. Unfortunately nobody makes such a thing"
Plenty of people "make' them, but they are homebrew jobs because users prefer CDs packed with every prog they can throw on them. BartPE and WinPE live CDs haven't caught up with Knoppix yet, but they will run many useful apps. The combination of a live CD and a USB key can be quite handy too.
Google "bartpe antivirus" for starters, and check out:
http://www.911cd.net/forums/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
When MS threatened to end support for VB6 and only support VB.Net, many enterprise customers refused to buy support contracts since they couldn't be bothered to port to .Net and what's the point in paying if what they do is unsupported. It will be the same situation with XP, since people are using that, they will only pay for support for that. MS wants the money (very much) and will back down. Especially if people don't buy Vista computers and Mac's market share continues to sky rocket.
Windows is complicated - in a bad way. But it's what people know. If they modularize Windows 7 and start to make it so the whole operating system is an add-on, I think that would only confuse people. I can't imagine my parents downloading a new module to make their Windows installation complete.
I understand the new the business model, but if Windows 7 is going to change so drastically, doesn't it give users a great opportunity to switch to a Mac? I swear, if an OS is so unfamiliar that they're going to have to effectively "re-learn" it, they might as well just go with whatever Apple is selling because in my limited experience, it's far better.
And as much as my wife loves using the Mac, I can still bust open a BASH shell terminal and do incredibly geeky stuff. Win-win.
I use nvEmulate to test rendering OpenGL 2.0 shaders (currently geometry, but adding layer for single pass cubemaps) on my Windows XP box and this is the DirectX equivalent. Hideous framerates, but at least I can see if it works. I don't actively develop or even build on my Windows XP box (I also have Vista, Linux, and Mac), so all I really do is verify it works.
I'm using XP now, and I've loved it for I'd say the last 5 years (though I frequently run an Ubuntu machine as well). And I WOULD be sad to see it go, except, it's not really going anywhere. I've got an sp2 disk laying around, and I doubt I will lose it or throw it away any time soon. That being said, one HUGE winner in the case of MS hosing it's entire fan base with crap (Vista) and discontinuing their more reliable/faster/easier OS (XP), is ReactOS and Winehq. I can imagine ReactOS being a lot farther along by the time the last XP boxes are coming off of the shelves, and since it will be a fully FOSS XP clone, I think the whole world might be a better place.
I'm betting on ReactOS to supplant Vista in 3 years.
Cheaper: Check
Faster: Check and Check
Easier: Works like XP (AKA like what everyone is already used to) Check
As it comes out of beta and into 1.0 territory, it will be a simple, strong, reliable OS with literally MILLIONS of great programs to install.
That will not be true for Mac OS, Vista, Linux, or any other OS. I'm surprised MS isn't more aware of this danger.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Why Microsoft doesn't develop MinWin into someting the end user wants [...]
Because it's _not_ what the end users want. End users want "it just works appliances". They don't want to go off and download their own browser, or their own media player, or any of the hundreds of other bits of functionality that are "standard" today.
Do not project the wants of the proportionally insignificant number of people who want "Windows, but kinda like Linux" on the vast majority who want nothing more than a computing appliance.
Although that level of perseverance is still pretty perverse. Pedantic? Probably.
Awesome alliteration!
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
It does not make one bit of difference to me if MS stops supporting XP. I have had windows updates turned off for some time now.
I keep my firewall, anti-virus, and browser updated. I don't use any of Microsoft's office products or any other MS programs besides the OS. If MS stops supporting Office on XP, it may just give people a reason to consider alternatives like Open Office.
The only reason I don't run a Linux distro right now is that my laptop came with XP and everything runs fine. If I feel the need to change OS's in the future, I will not be upgrading to another version of windows, but rather to a linux distro.
FAQs are evil.
Indeed. While the state of Windows security is far from perfect, Windows machines "just sitting around" aren't ticking time bombs (assuming, as the poster did, that it remains patched to most current levels, etc) any more than OS X, et al.
Many small local cable TV producers use embedded Windows in their equipment. Sometimes, late at night or weekends, they crash and display BSOD on cable TV channels. Sometimes for hours.
This is slow as hell, but it works.
- 64-bit OS - I deliberately avoided XP 64-bit. 4-8GB consumer systems are becoming necessary. Games easily push 2GB now. I run 8GB in my G5 and I am using just under 6GB as I type this. Workstations demand 8GB+. This is the biggest reason for me to move to Vista.
- XP is old! I remember installing it on my PIII 550.
- Much better UI - again, XP is old!
- Sleep and resume is much improved - I build my own systems and Sleep never worked under XP.
- DirectX 10 - Looking forward to Alan Wake
- I work in the IT industry so I need to be familiar with Vista. Our workstation lease expires this year. All of our driver/software needs are Vista compatible so we will be making the change to Vista.
I could not move to Vista until certain hot fixes were released back in November. Microsoft's biggest failure was that Vista was not a polished OS when it was released. Vista may never recover from that. A friend of mine was dead set against Vista purely from what he had heard - he had no experience using Vista. It was only after I demoed my setup that he realized how good Vista was. I built him a Vista 64-bit gaming box and he is a happy camper.
On the day of SP1s release I was bold enough to install it as soon as it was available on both of my PCs. No problems so far.
As Vista does not ship with OEM software I avoided that mess.
The thing is I hate Windows. I hate having to use it at work and I hate the fact that I am forced to use it at home. Ideally I would love to find a Mac only job. I wish gaming under Mac OS X was as good as it is on Windows but that won't happen for a very long time (if ever).
Well, I read about Vista, examined it on a friend's system, and decided that I didn't want to pay MS to upgrade to something I didn't need. Instead I decided to move to the Mac. My wife and I now both have new 20" Imac Desktops and she also has the new Macbook Air. MS has almost lost a customer here, except I did go buy a copy of XP SP2 so I could use Bootcamp to run games (City of Heroes/Villains and Pirates of the Burning Sea, both MMORPGs). Same for my wife's desktop.
If we weren't both gamers, we would never need to touch Windows again. If Apple is smart, they will either convince developers to start developing for the Mac as well, or find some way to let the Mac run windows games. So far Parallels and VMWare are not up to the task at least for the games I want to play. If I could break my dependence on gaming I would be completely free of MS entirely.
The difference between running XP and Mac OS/X for me is like the difference between driving a Ford Tempo and driving a BMW. Sure, XP does the things I need it to do, in a mediocre fashion and with plenty of things I find irritating, but Mac OS/X seems to work better, faster, more effectively and more comfortably to me in pretty much every regard. If I need to run most Linux/Unix software, it is capable of doing so. I have a fully capable terminal if needed. I am totally impressed and a complete Mac convert now. Some of this is undoubtedly the geeky joy of discovering a new OS, but mostly its just that things seem to work and work well. Often I find myself looking for how to do something - and based on MS OS experience expecting to have to jump through some hoops to accomplish it - then discovering that its quite simple and userfriendly and there are no hoops.
Meanwhile my friend with the Vista system doesn't have to reboot to play the same games as me, but he does suffer constant problems of various sorts and I don't think hes very happy with it overall.
I think Apple has an opportunity to take a much larger share of the desktop market in the coming year or so. Its already on the move of course, but I see a lot of Mac systems being sold in local stores, a lot more than I used to see - and a lot more stores carrying them that I used to see. I sincerely hope that Apple takes the chance and tries to push itself much further into the market because they have a superior product in my opinion. Competition really is a good thing it seems, and Apple's offerings put Microsoft's to shame at the moment.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Back in August 1998 the MGM Grand's huge outdoor screen on the Las Vegas strip was mostly down for an entire week. They would reboot Windows only for it crash minutes later in a BSOD. This went on for months.
Facebook is billions of individual "Skinner Boxes." And if you use it you are the pigeon!
So what do I run?
Server 2003!
Its like XP without all of the hassle. Its faster and more stable too. And when XP dies, server 2003 gets the chair and all that is left is vista, what will I run? Server 2008! Its based on the vista kernel and so it will be supported as long or longer than vista and I won't have to put up with any of the vista BS. I've never had to activate my windows. Vista is a hog and as far as I'm concerned, it can cease to exist and drag XP with it.
"Vista... the best thing that ever happened to Linux..."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
That's another great thing about linux. You can turn that stuff off either individually or totally. With linux it's all up to you.
All the way back to the command line with no GUI at all? That's
Or you just can disable individual features with the menu. Unlike Aero, turning off the glitter doesn't slow down the machine at all. Have it your way, whatever that is. Are you totally pumped about Genuine Advantage? You can have that too!
With the death of Windows XP those new to the Linux environment may find Linux Genuine Advantage comforting and familiar. After they get acclimated they won't need such things any more. I wish someone would write an annoying service that pops up every few minutes to ask ambiguous "are you sure?" questions, an antivirus mock-up, a "security center" gui and mock GUI firewall application. New linux users are always looking for that stuff and fearful when they can't find it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
And one of the games in the "arcade" was showing the BSOD. I really got a chuckle out of that one--what, are they building cabinets and installing the Windows version of MAME so they can charge you 75 cents to play Double Dragons, or something?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
There was always something just "right" about W2K. They had the DLL hell thing sorted out, but as an OS it kept its focus, was fast, straightforward, and a very clean evolution of NT4. I liked using it in a way that I hate XP+.
stop lying...
this is slashdot... it is your mom's basement.
All that incessant blabber of yours about how everyone around you is "dishonest" and actively gaming Slashdot comes to mind. How do you reconcile all that with your obviously fake holier-than-though attitude?
Seriously though, how do you juggle so many accounts? I'm actually curious. Do you use four different browsers or just one and have to log off and log in to reply to your own posts?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Does the DSL modem works with a Windows machine ?.. in other words.. if you plug in a Windows computer right now.. no problems ?
I guess what I am asking is.. is the DSL modem already "set up" ?.. It's not a new account or anything ?
I think you really need to get your DSL problem solved first.. then your dosbox & midi problems will be easier to solve, because apt will fix the dependencies.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Check out
http://thedailywtf.com/
They have a whole section on screen captures.
... and the only support issues I have with Windows 2000 are caused by software that refuses to run under Windows 2000, one way or another. Whether it's Microsoft components that check before they run, or third party installers that check before they install, the result is the same: there is no fundamental difference between 2000 and XP.
Unfortunately they seem to have learned their lesson and changed many driver models for Vista.
That feature is called Windows Update.
Huh... doesn't suck here. I am consistently able to record live-to-multitrack using my Mackie Onyx 1640 firewire and Ardour 2.1 on 64Studio. I've recorded three 4-hour shows that way in the last few months. No problems except out-of-tune guitars ;) Seriously, 64Studio has worked out-of-the-box for me on all of my gear -- give it a shot!
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
I bow before Your Perversity.
The television will not be revolutionized.
Oh heck. How old am I?
"Take a gander at MinWin. It's what Microsoft uses for development of Windows and related tidbits. 25 megs on disk, and uses less than 40 megs RAM. That's with networking as well. Eric Taut demoed it at a lecture once with it acting as an HTTP server."
Sounds kind of bloated, at least compared to the equivalent Linux distros...
Good point. Combined with a head bow, that one could sting a little. I think I'll try it out on my boss tomorrow.
What can you usefully surf w/ Lynx today? A screenshot would rock!
... kinda... in the days when my BBS provided lynx support. I think I was like 2. (o.k. maybe 15, but showing my age none the less.) I remember reading an article about a duckbilled platypus or something. Ugly text formatting, but readable.
I remember back
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
The heck with (X)tra (P)ain. I'm not letting loose from my copies of 2000/SP4/Final Rollup, and 2000 Server, until they pry them both from my cold, dead fingers!
My systems do everything I expect of them, and they do it WELL. What more can I ask? Why should I "upgrade" what's not broken?
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
"One slight problem with this at the moment; MS really do make the best development tools. They seem to have concentrated well on that. Try finding a good OSS alternative to VS, C#, .net, and TFS, with builtin VS2008 unit testing. Just try."
Emacs+SLIME+LISP will beat the pants off anything MS.
I'm a proud owner of 8 core Mac Pro. It's only been less than 3 weeks now, but I mostly like the experience. I like the Unix commands and the terminal (I used MKS Toolkit Korn Shell on all my windows machines before), and the equivalent Mac applications (Mac Vim, Photoshop and all Adobe apps) are mostly the same.
My ONLY complaint so far is the poor, fuzzy font rendering in OS X. I just can't get used to it, and compared to windows XP with clear type is quite horrendous. OS X has very few options when it comes to font fine tuning, and none make significant difference. Not sure what my options otherwise are really.
If it weren't for this, I would give the OS X perfect grade.
Oh, and Firefox on Mac seems to be a second class citizen. Version 3 looks promising though...
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
Here's a review a guy did on upgrading to the best version of windows:
http://dotnet.org.za/codingsanity/archive/2007/12/14/review-windows-xp.aspx
And just in case you didn't get your quota of funny today:
http://ex-parrot.com/~pete/upside-down-ternet.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoA8pi9Rmk
They ARE out to get you simply because They are in it for themselves and they don't care about you.
There are a growing number of sites who after even 98 had died pushing and innovating support like one of my favorite windowsupdate.62nds.com (all the needed updates with out the bloated unnecessary stuff through firefox plugin tooo!)
When they die or get scared off others will replace them.. The wine project is defiantly not dead. I have seen forcing my self to use xp to do odd stuff to completely not needed the OS now that google put some money into wine making things like dreamweaver and photoshop work nicer..
As time goes on Linux will become better (It just gets better) and at a rate 20 times faster then what Microsoft can do it at. So
Mac OS X for the apple stuff its only time people realize the bubble they are in and that with out the few closed source programs there is really not to much to the mac/apple that was not borrowed heavy from Linux
Like I say to everyone
If your not using Linux now , You will be !
Yeah, they're phasing it out, unless you're a large corporate customer and are willing to pay the premium coin for EOL support... besides, if they are phasing out it out - why did they just move the SP3 into RC3?
I just had the most insane problem with my Linux desktop that kept it down over the weekend while I straightened it out. I 3 Linux, I use Linux as my primary OS, but if it's that hard getting my mainstream hardware working properly, then I fear how hard it would be to get obscure recording hardware working properly.
Not to mention I still can't find a simple drop-in replacement for sound editing that's as good as soundforge and won't crash on me. Audacity is the closest thing, and it never fails to ruin my day.
However, I will take a look at this 64Studio thing. I was also curious about the Ubuntu-based multimedia distro out there. It's hard enough dragging myself to the recording computer without running into bizarre computer issues.
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
To be fair, the $599 Mac Mini doesn't do you much good if you want to actually interact with your computer (requires a monitor, keyboard, and mouse). But if it'll boot OSX and run completely headless, I guess it counts :)
Forceing people to buy an inferior product such as vista is BS and should be cause for another anti trust suit. Directx10 and vista as a whole makes all the power of the new PC you buy pretty much useless. Some games it cant even run and countless other amazing programs do not work on vista. I cant even play WC3 with out massive frame lag. It seems to be mircosoft is just trying to kill PC gameing so that it can make more money from XBOXs and sell more games. Its the only logical reason to force such a useless,laggy,uneffiecent OS on the PC market claiming it as some sort of an improvement.
When windows ME is more stable/effecient there is something wrong.
I will never buy a vista computer and i urge anyone and everyone i know/dont know to never buy one. Only if PC sales drop will INTEL (which has been a huge supporter of the POS that is vista) get the message. What is the point of buying a powerful comp that has such crappy software that it makes gaming unbarable.
Only thing that needs to die is vista and the support for it.
Its clearly to kill PC gaming and force you to buy an xbox and there games for gaming. At the same time make a money grab with the POS that is VISTA. Cause clearly all it does is drag hardware performance down and have countless software problems. Its like paying for a porche and getting a PT cruiser...
Right on, I've had good luck with Audacity but admitedly I haven't really put it through its paces. However, comparing XP x64 to the Debian-based 64Studio, it's much more stable and feature-rich. I couldn't use my Firepod and Mackie at the same time using Sonar 5, but jack lets me do it without complaint. Just had to tweak a couple of buffer settings. The more I work with Ardour the more I'm impressed, though. I just wish the documentation was more in the manual and less on their forums.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
64Studio
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
Yeah, it might be a pointless exercise, but still... http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/03/sign_the_save_x.html (Save Windows XP Petition)
A year after I bought my Vista-infected laptop, my local computer store still carries hardware a large majority of which that doesn't have driver support for Vista. Not on or in the box or on their web site. They said maybe Vista would work with it anyway......but who's gonna fork out cash and waste time on a "maybe"? Not me. Been there before. It sucks. My next macine will be a Linux-based system like the Eeepc and the next desktop will probably be an Apple of some sort...and that's only because Linux has no video-editing software....(Cinelerra sucks and the rest segfault).
Only boring people are ever bored.
"To be fair, the $599 Mac Mini doesn't do you much good if you want to actually interact with your computer"
I haven't come across many dongles that one can interact with sans some extra hardware. Note also that the same criticism can be levelled at Apple's high end dongles, because monitors are an extra-cost item with the Mac Pro (although it could be argued that one can interact with them in an obtuse sort of way because they generously include a mouse and keyboard, a $98 value if bought separately from Apple, or $20 from other vendors...)
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Vista is awful, a memory hog, slow performance, security a knowledgeable user has no need for. Things you might want like bitlocker are so screwed up no one uses them, the gadgets are nice, a grest place for spyware to show up. I love microsoft and hate apple, but as an engineer I have to be real. XP will be phased out, then reintroduced with another name to get sucklers to buy the same thing twice. Think of the phase out of classic coke in the 80's which was nothing more than a clever ruse to take Pepsi's market share and get a lot of priceless free publicity.
to WindowsXP.
I wish I could find a legal copy of Windows98SE.
I appreciated that very much. I don't hate IE7 so much now. 8')
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
And as for the old GDI bug, I used to get around some of that by using a lightweight blackbox style shell along with an ultra lightweight file manager. You be surprised how much bloat there was in Win9X explorer. And I just checked the MSDN forums and they are STILL making cool customizations for Win98 as well as keeping an up to date list for motherboards that ship with Win98 drivers! LOL! I guess that some guys like their Win9X the way I like my Win2K. That is one of the great things about DIY IMHO. You don't have to listen to some companies timetables are do the forced upgrade shuffle if you are willing to spend a little time tweaking and hacking. They even have cooked up a hack for running 2Gb of ram on Win98 by using a RAMdrive along with a hacked
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Indeed. While the state of Windows security is far from perfect, Windows machines "just sitting around" aren't ticking time bombs (assuming, as the poster did, that it remains patched to most current levels, etc) any more than OS X, et al.
Sorry... I coulda sworn I still saw updates and hotfixes that dealt with buffer overflows and underflows and similar issues which wouldnt take much more than finding a Windows machine and exploiting that hole. And I coulda sworn that as many times as people think MS has corrected all such issues, someone finds a similar new exploit shortly after the earlier ones are "corrected"
Gotta remember, many people dont have a real firewall (heck, many people think that silly little button in XP to "enable firewall" actually IS a (real) firewall). And of course, a decent number of people still dont have ISPs that block the dangerous Windows ports that other ISPs block...
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!