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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."
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
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
Probably the video drivers. I know my XP runs quite a bit faster than ubuntu. I can't run you tube videos in full screen in ubuntu without major drops in frame rate. Not only that, I have to restart X when changing users or the radeon gl renderer changes to mesa.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
My laptop actually is slower with a standard Ubuntu install than with Vista
I don't really have a hard time believing this. Between video acceleration (non-restricted drivers) and things like networking support (ndiswrapper aka the spawn of satan) it might be easy to get a situation where some things are or just feel more speedy on Vista. I have Vista on a desktop at home just trying it out and performance (aside from file copying) has never been a problem. While I think there are some serious design issues with Vista I do not find any fault with response time or performance on moderately new hardware.
An extreme case is startup/shutdown/hibernate times. On XP/Vista it takes about 30-45 seconds goes from off to usable and about 8 seconds when in hibernation. I may as well shut down the Ubuntu partition since coming out of hibernation is no faster than just starting it up normally (which takes a lot longer than 30 seconds) and occasionally hibernation fails to resume correctly.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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Not backwards compatible?
At work (I'm a PC game developer), pretty much everyone has upgraded to 64-bit Vista. Here's a rundown of some of the software we're using:
Visual Studio 6, 2005, & 2008
Visual Assist X
3D Studio Max
Maya
Photoshop
Perforce
Various PC games (including ours, our parent company's games, and various competitors)
Various in-house tools and utilities
All this with zero (that I'm aware of) compatibility issues. Note that these software packages are 32-bit binaries as well. We've been using it for a number of months now, and it certainly hasn't slowed us down at all.
Maybe if you're talking about drivers and low-level software like virus scanners / other utilities, sure. Or 16-bit Windows apps. But nearly all standard 32-bit Windows applications work just fine in Vista.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I have yet to run into an app that runs in XP and not Vista that I see as a useful app. It's like the XP/SP1 to SP2 "killing" backwards computability. Well built applications didn't suffer, but poor built ones and ones that used short-cuts and quick-and-dirty coding techniques would often fail. Like the proper ways to call DLLs and the lazy way some people do it would break apps in SP2.
And of course Microsoft is forcing a time line on XP. Do you expect them to sit around and make constant improvements for every OS they've ever built? Of course they're going to phase out something they've made their money on and not put money where it wont benefit them.
If i had one dollar for every brain you dont have, i would have $1.
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.
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.
Cisco Systems VPN Client doesn't. That's (one of) the deal-breaker(s) for me.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Well built applications didn't suffer, but poor built ones and ones that used short-cuts and quick-and-dirty coding techniques would often fail. Like the proper ways to call DLLs and the lazy way some people do it would break apps in SP2.
.Net 3.5 libraries on 2.0 using Windows 2000...and they all work. Microsoft is now reaching the point where they're forcing upgrades just to force upgrades. Despite the fact that the computer that you now own should *always* be powerful enough to run the latest webcam, word processor, browser, and GUI (and even do amazing things with Virtual Machines), and could easily support the latest apps that do these kinds of things faster and better, you can't be sure that you'll be able to use it for that forever.
I take it you don't use any applications that require access to hardware that doesn't have a Windows driver model for it, or for which the Windows driver is crappy (such as, for example, sound cards and cameras)?
Those have perfect excuses for not working in Vista. But the other point is forward compatibility.
I've tried a lot of the
You may have to throw it away simply because the monopoly that makes most of the software on it won't sell you what you want from them - better apps.
Seems like as a monopoly they shouldn't be allowed to do this kind of collusion...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
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.
Er, Compiz isn't a memory hog though. I just measured it, and with all the standard features turned on it seems to use about 8MB more than a standard non-compositing window manager (e.g. metacity). It's also very fast and responsive with even minimal hardware acceleration (I'm using a machine with built-in intel 845G graphics, and compiz works very nicely).
I don't know what MS did to fuck up Vista so much, but you can't lay it at the feet of "compositing window managers."
We live, as we dream -- alone....
and you can turn the eye candy shit off.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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.
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.
MSFT has forgotten that people generally HATE change.Especially those that just use a pc for a few tasks and look at it as nothing more than a combo Internet/game player.XP may have started out with the "Fisher Price" look,but it was butt simple to change it back to a Win98/Win2K look.And most of the shortcuts and other basics worked the same.With Vista it feels like they changed a lot of stuff just to have change and has irked a lot of folks.But that is just my 02c from down here in Win repair land.YMMV
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Are you serious?
You should think about that for a moment. Then think about a little bit more, and then you might realize how astronomically stupid of a statement that is. (Not you, just Microsoft attempting to do it).
Those stickers that are on the sides of computers, or in my case on a piece of paper, are worth 175$ approx. right now. The EULA forces Microsoft to provide activation FOREVER.
That's right. FOREVER. If they don't provide you with a activation key to accomplish an installation, they are in default of their contractual agreement. That's the problem with activation. A customer has purchased the right to use that software for an indefinite amount of time. It is the software developers responsibility to provide the activation service for as long as their customers EXIST.
Pain in the Ass huh? Well that's what they get for being Big Brother. Big Brother has to always be there to hold your hand and make sure you are doing the right thing. It's like kids. It's a lifelong job, with no end in sight, except DEATH. For any company that uses activation as a protection mechanism, there are costs associated with it. The only way out is to file bankruptcy to protect them from pissed off customers who cannot activate anymore.
Of course, there is always the option of running a pirated copy that bypasses activation. Nothing wrong with that, especially since you still possess the Certificate of Authenticity.
I have always felt there should be a congressional investigation into Microsoft's practices with bundling software. I feel it should be illegal to do so, without methods in place to obtain rebates through the mail. Why? That sticker.
You have the right from the EULA agreement to transfer that product FOREVER. Without Limitations Even.
Furthermore, Microsoft made no provisions in the EULA, which "constitutes the entire agreement", to actually stop providing the activation services. If they did you would be well within your rights to sue them.
Check out this link: http://www.microsoft.com/about/legal/useterms/default.aspx
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.
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!
The Desktop Windows Manager, the service tied to Windows Aero, is using 22MB of RAM on my machine. I don't know what you think of 22MB, but I don't think it's a prolific drain on my system, especially considering the memory would otherwise be sitting around, wasted and unused.
I also gain two important benefits from that 22MB of RAM. First is obviously the eye candy. Regardless of other opinions, I enjoy Aero and all the animations. I like the glass, I like the animations, I like the fluid motion as I drag the windows around. Beyond that, the DWM serves to offload the movement of windows onto the GPU, which frees up my CPU.
Try this: with Aero enabled, open the task manager and experiment with how various window operations effect CPU usage. By dragging, maximizing, minimizing, and resizing, I'm hard pressed to get my CPU to spike above 40%. Now turn Aero off. The DWM shrinks to using 1MB, but now look at CPU usage. You'll see the meter soar to 100% usage just by dragging a window. Not only that, but I'm back to the same Windows 2000 era window trails. Yuck.
So, that's not a bad gain for 22MB of RAM. So again, I don't know how tight you are for RAM, but I've certainly got 22MB lying around and I'll gladly use it up to gain a better overall desktop experience.
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!
Why is Parent marked Funny? At my office, we have:
60% Windows 2000
20% Windows XP
6% Windows NT / 98 SE
12% Linux - various flavours
We have more than 2000 PCs in all group companies put together.
Windows 2000 is easily the dominant and quick-to-install; easy to maintain OS. XP is a pain - atleast the downloading of patches and service packs part. We have only 3 systems running Vista and all 3 are none too happy with Vista so far.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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.
- Will Microsoft use activation to force me to upgrade? In other words, will Microsoft ever stop giving out activation codes for any of the products that require activation?
I cannot find similar information on Microsoft's USA site. However, I'd still say it's likely, but not a certainty.No, Microsoft will not use activation as a tool to force people to upgrade. Activation is merely an anti-piracy tool, nothing else.
Microsoft will also support the activation of Windows XP throughout its life and will likely provide an update that turns activation off at the end of the product's lifecycle so users would no longer be required to activate the product.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
i just love the fact how slashdoters always seem to ignore one small fact: Vista sales numbers are going up...linux is still NOT catching up...Ubuntu hasn't made THAT MUCH of a difference and this ISN'T going to change =)
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;
Make a slipstream disc - download all of the patches, stick in the slipstreamed DriverPacks.net drivers and make a batch file for installing the programs. It's trivially easy (one hour tops plus download time) and a good time saver (I have one just for the multiple reinstalls on my home computer).
Alternatively, if they've got the same hardware (which if you're in a big company seems likely), you can just install one computer and image the disk. I'm surprised you're still doing attended installs for such a large company.
The mini-storage place I rent maintains all their records -- even real-time stuff like gate entries and exits, and, I assume, alarm conditions -- on an Apple ][. They even have some 9-pin impact dot-matrix printer attached to it. Occasionally I get a notice letter from them printed on it, on paper that was clearly once fan-fold tractor-feed stock.
Something in me admires that.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I can attest to the fact that it's not "a bit of slowdown" - it's an imprecise measure but I'd say my laptop now "feels" at least two times faster/more responsive. We are talking about a pretty zippy dual core machine with 3 gigs of RAM and a powerful video card, too (256MB DDR3 nvidia 8600gt), which ran like treacle with Vista on it.
I can attest the opposite. I don't notice any slowdowns in vista when it has loaded. In fact, I just know that my firefox on vista loads way faster than on xp. I will admit the fancy animations can simulate less responsiveness (but those can be turned off) and that vista cold boot time is fairly slow. But XP cold boots can be just as slow with poor drivers and enough software set to run themselves in the background on startup (aka quicktime and other stupid programs).
I have since played with another, similar Vista laptop trying to figure out what is doing all the damage. The worst individual offenders seem to be the (well documented) user account control bullshit which interferes with every aspect of the operation of the computer, and "supercache", which would have to be in the top 5 worst Microsoft innovations of all time.
You went in the wrong direction in my opinion. I left UAC on but run as a normal user so anytime the UAC pops up I have to type in the admin password. It is how I know that software is either written incorrectly or trying to do something I probably don't approve of. There have been many instances where I installed a piece of software only to find itself trying to install other crapware because the UAC window would popup when the other software tried to start installing itself.
I didn't disable vista's memory caching features first because I think that better memory utilization is a good idea for any OS especially with today's cheap memory prices. So instead I disabled other culprits that cause high disk activity. First I disabled indexing because there aren't very many times when I want to search my entire hard disk. I just don't have that many document files that are worth searching. But the disk activity was still too high. So next I disabled windows defender which is window's new built-in malware scanner (aka antivirus). Bingo, disk utilization has dropped significantly.
Supercache apparently considers about 1.5 gigabytes on a system with 3 gigabytes of RAM to be a reasonable amount of physical memory to use for this process.
And I say let it use every bit of "free" memory. Free memory is like letting that fancy convertible you bought sit in the garage while you go off and use your old car. You paid for the resource, now your OS has magically decided that it should not be used!? If I knew that my OS didn't need that extra 1.5gb most of the time then I ought to take that 1.5gb of ram and sell it on ebay.
People think that cached memory is some kind of huge tax when it isn't. If a block of memory is allocated to a program, it does not need to be zero'ed out. It can be handed with all of its garbage to the program requesting a new block of memory. So a block of cache or a block of free memory is all the same. The only tax paid in caching is filling the cache.
Additionally, Windows XP already "surveys" you. When you go into the add/remove programs control panels in XP it will show you how often you utilize each piece of software you have installed.
Turning UAC and Supercache off (both pretty straightforward once you know where to look) improves performance a lot - but not enough. Vista still has an offensively huge footprint and runs like a dog compared to XP.
Turn off windows defender.
I have a vista machine with an intel dual core 1.8ghz and 2gb of ram. I'd rather use it than my single core laptop with 1gb of ram or my work desktop with a 3.4ghz p4, 2gb of ram, and windows xp.
hardware manufacturers have the guts to stand up to Microsoft and keep producing XP versions of thei
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...
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.
Well, I didn't like XP snooping on me. Right before XP was released, I got a WebTV device from Microsoft for home surfing. Its clickthru license was horrendous in what I'd be allowing it to snoop on. For example, I think there was even some legalese that said I'd be in violation if I did X, then the next paragraph said I'd be in violation if I didn't do X, so clicking would terminate all my rights, but leave Microsoft with all its arbitrary rights, including rights to my data, both on the WebTV and on the network. Which would have made me responsible if MS ran a botnet out of it, on my LAN's other PCs, and commandeering PCs with it across the Internet. But I ignored it, like any mandatory clickthru license. Then I noticed it was phoning home to MS every night at 5AM, and portscanning my other LAN PCs. You can bet I ripped that mofo right out of my home and shipped it back.
A few months later XP was clearly going to depend on phoning home for all kinds of invasive snooping. Plus Hotmail was going to correlate email traffic to it, to say nothing of MSN. And MS had an entire "Palladium" strategy to use a single login key to join all my personal data across every database known to man (ie. Gates - both Bill and the Secretary of Defense). So I went the other way.
But I'm curious. What user problems did you avoid in favor of the Mac? Personally, I find the Linux desktop user problems to be much fewer, less frustrating and less actually damaging (lost data, lost days of work, lost mind) than Windows ever was. Especially using APT, where I can wait a while to see that a large and interested community is inspecting the source of apps for bugs, then downloading only what can be easily forensically tracked from the repos later if there was an exploited security hole. Instead of downloading arbitrary binaries from whoever without any tracks, and always just hoping it's safe before it's too late.
Maybe the Mac is even better. But does it have the variety of software, especially for programmers, that Linux has?
--
make install -not war