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Microsoft Extends XP To May 2009 For OEMs
beuges writes "Microsoft has announced over the weekend that it would allow computer manufacturers to receive copies of XP until the end of May 2009, shortly before Windows 7 is expected to hit the market. This should allow users to skip Vista entirely and move straight to 7, which has been receiving cautiously favorable reviews of pre-release and leaked alphas."
More like Windows ME 2, do they really think people will buy it when they haven't sorted out the problems with vista.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
unbelievable.
it would take a butt the size of mount everest for any company to take the plunge and trust anything from microsoft again, after the stunt they pulled with vista.
and what happens to the poor sods who DID trust microsoft and upgraded their entire office to vista, again ?
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Probably too late for me. I kept a Windows box to work from home but now that I've been using a spare Linux machine am deciding I can do without. Worst case I could create a dual boot and move on from all future Microsoft products.
I guess I'm tired of the hardware rat race and given the recent issue with DRM on Spore, it would seem I will stop looking at mega-commercial games and start checking out independent shops instead.
Is anyone surprised by this? Many customers told them time after time that they didn't want vista, and that they would rather use XP. Now I'm not a fan of M$, but I can say that XP Pro SP3 is absolutly amazing and stable I really really don't feel the need to upgrade to vista when I've finally got XP tuned so well that I hardly have to do any maintenance on it.
woohoo!!!!!
It's not uncommon for companies to skip OS's , so this works out great for our 40,000 users. So we can go from XP sp3 direct to Win7 , but we will probably wait for SP1 of Win7.
So Microsoft will just release Windows 7 and get away with forcing the average consumer to purchase new computers with Vista on it?
What do they care. Wonderful thing about still being a virtual desktop monopoly. Am I wrong?
Given that Server 2008 SP1 is the Server Version of Vista SP1 & MS will be releasing Server 2008 R2 in correspondence with Windows 7, isn't it fair to say that Windows 7 is essentially Vista R2?
Granted, some of the painful parts of Vista are being removed & some enhancements made, but the hardware requirements haven't gone down & it's still based on the same core code.
I guess I'll really care when they have a new OS that will run on an Atom based netbook.
I'm not old enough to remember all the promises of '95/'98, etc (More like I didn't care). But I'm already seeing the same XP/Vista/7 cycle start over..
Microsoft is setting themselves up for another round of the same old shit. Vista had favorable reviews from pre-releases and leaked alphas.... and then features started to drop to meet the continually moving release date.
Microsoft is going to have to sever all backwards compatibility at some point if they want a fresh start. Microsoft BOUGHT an Emulator/Virtualizer (Virtual PC), how hard would it be to make a seamless sandboxed XP install?
Not to sound to fanboyish, but Apple has done this TWICE in the last 10 years. First OS 9 -> OS X. Sandboxed everything in Classic. Not everything worked perfect, but it bridged the gap. Then again with the release on Intel If you already had your Apps in XCode all it took was 1 checkmark in a config. That's it. Complete new binary for a new architecture. And if that didn't work you still had Rosetta, which like classic, wasn't perfect but it works. On my laptop I seamlessly run PPC code on an Intel machine with less problems than most people have had with just trying to run Vista.
Not just GUI apps either. I can compile something like coreutils on a PPC machine and run it on an Intel machine, not ideal but it works.
Microsoft is supposedly the 800# gorilla in the corner but it can't figure out how to cut all ties to the past and move on.
when i say WHOOOHOOOO! :D
I've been intentionally buying "XP downgrade" systems from lenovo to avoid vista, and I'm glad we'll have it for another 6 months!
Yay! :)
If they use the same security prompts/process as Vista then Windows 7 will be another one to skip. I have found it inconsistent and incomplete.
* If your account is a local admin then should you be prompted to do some things? Probably, but not more than once. I swear there is a minimum of two prompts by default.
* Why does an admin need to choose "Run as admin" for some things?
* If the system is going to prompt me then make sure I will see it. Sometimes the security prompts pop-under. If I go off to another program while waiting for something to finish only to later find the unanswered prompt still waiting for my response.
* If a program requires admin access or "Run as admin" then clearly give the user direction to do so. Try pathping for instance and you get "0 No resources". Launch cmd "as admin" and it works fine.
The Vista security model is horrible IMHO. We are just getting started with Windows 2008 and it looks like it is going to be more of the same. If I am logged in as admin on a server I sure hope I don't get the same incomplete and inconsistent experience. If so, Windows 2008 will be the Server OS to skip from MS. (I'm sure some slashdotters will say they should all be skipped. :-) )
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
not already in use, you made my day by talking the inconvenient truth. Thank you. :)
Here's the problem: Microsoft has used illegal tactics to maintain its monopoly gained from unethical practices.
Microsoft's monopoly is so entrenched, that the proto-typical "Sun Oil" case can't even compare.
In a real competitive environment, customers would have long ago abandoned Microsoft. The best analogy is WordStar vs WordPerfect. WordStar was first, but WordPerfect was better. Naturally WordStar lost and is now, no more.
Microsoft is so entrenched, and so anti-standards, that your data and business operations are held hostage. You can't escape the Widows lock-in without paying a lot of money and abandoning some of your core applications.
Furthermore, the monopoly level of Microsoft means that it is unrealistic for ISVs to develop for other platforms because Windows represents 80+% of the market and who can justify an the cost of development unless you can really identify a market. Virtually every notebook and P.C. sold at the consumer and "system" level has Windows installed.
In a real competitive environment, Windows ME, Microsoft BOB, Microsoft Dogs, or Vista would have killed any other company and we would be glad to see them go. But no, it is so bad that users CAN'T escape windows, so they are settling for an 8 year old operating system instead of modern alternatives.
If there was ever a time where clear proof existed that Microsoft needs to be broken up, this is it. Its insane.
I would disagree with you. I dual-boot Ubuntu 8.10 and Vista Ultimate 64bit at home, and I don't think either has an edge when it comes to stability. It's really hard to make that judgment, since in the three months or so I've had them, neither has crashed even once.
For me, Vista has certainly been more stable than WindowsXP, though. It's interesting though, that Ubuntu 8.10 was just as much of a stability improvement, compared to previous versions of Ubuntu.
I think Vista has a really bad rap, which may or may not be justified, and is probably largely reliant on the performance of the pre-SP1 32-bit version, which (even in my experience) was pretty atrocious.
But at the moment, Vista works just fine for me... and it's certainly worth the $66 I paid for the student version, which I consider a fair price. I certainly don't think I am somehow entitled to receiving good software for free (which is why I donate to various OSS projects, including Ubuntu).
if Windows 7 tanks, they can always ask for bailout money like all the other companies that make crappy products.
Lets see, 8 years to devolop win vista and only 2 years to develop win 7 Yea this will be good. I will stick to my custom built min install of Debian
I have both Ubuntu and Vista and I prefer dual booting into Vista... I actually like the apps more on Ubuntu (kdevelop/bash), but, Vista's start bar, control panel, and user interface just nails it for me. Makes ubuntu feel old fashioned.
Unix people can complain about Vista as much as the want, but the fact is, they screwed up as bad as MS did. Microsoft doesn't hand out opportunities to attack its desktop and certainly with some of the bad Vista buzz, they did. But, the linux community blew it.
Gnome is moving at a glacial pace, and KDE is in no man's land. It's almost like, had KDE either finished 4 or just polished 3.x, or Gnome just moved more quickly, either could have had a real Vista killer, but, both missed.
This is my sig.
It seems that many people really think there wasn't much recourse for Microsoft putting out such a terrible product in it's initial release of Vista.... This very much so isn't the case.
If we refer to the table here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems you can see how much of the market has started to diversify since Vista came out. I think it would be safe to assume that the market share of Vista is somewhat inflated due to the fact that Microsoft made it very difficult to get anything but Vista on a regular consumer machine for quite some time, and now most major builders charge a fee ($150 at some!) to "downgrade" Vista to XP.
Since Q1 of 2007, Microsoft has seen both of their largest competitors in the desktop operating system market (Apple & Linux) double their penetration. Will this possibly drive them to bring us a better product? On a side note, Microsoft Server 2008 as a workstation is definitely worth taking a look at. You can download and use it free for 60 days, and a quick look at http://www.win2008workstation.com/wordpress/ will give you some pointers on setting it up. There are definitely some things lacking, but it might give you hope that M$ will do something right in their next major release.
I wonder if they will let you buy the windows 7 upgrade for xp though? Or will you have to buy the full retail for 7, in which case they've as good as sold you a vista upgrade (plus a windows 7 upgrade) even though you didn't want anything to do with vista?
I personally find it hilarious that they keep extending xp as the consumer mass keeps threatening to make a "true" upgrade to another os...
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I deny being Bill Gates.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
that Microsoft will implement DRM features and such in Windows 7? To prevent piracy and whatnot?
Now, what Microsoft needs to do is:
(1) Offer free DOWNGRADES for anyone with a Vista license.
(2) Offer free UPGRADES to Windows Seven for anyone who buys a machine loaded with Vista.
Today I shall be installing a replacement IDE hard drive in a 6 year old system, a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, which I'd much rather upgrade but won't simply because anything I bought today would be running Vista.
...will be the name. By not being called "Vista", users won't associate it with all the horror stories they've heard about Vista, so they'll be willing to give it a chance.
It will have a handful of minor improvements, but otherwise I expect it to be mostly identical. Vista's biggest problem is third-party compatibility, which should mostly be worked out by the time Windows 7 ships.
Personally, I hate Vista a lot less than I hate XP. Most people can't understand how I would say that, but that's because they actually like XP. Blech.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I really like the benefits of Linux, and I think that given a little more time to mature, it could really take off with less-technical users. I wouldn't mind Windows 7 sucking just to give Linux a bit more of an incubation period.
(And, given the things MS has pulled in the past, I still think it's got a big karma deficit to work off. I'm still overwhelmed with a sense of schadenfreude against MS.)
I could go on but for your sanity and mine I will not.
As usual, after Vista's debacle, Microsoft communicates about their next generation OS, trying to keep the users focused on their software, to prevent them for looking for competition.
What has changed recently is that the economy crisis will force most of the companies to reduce their cost.
This will be done in two phases:
- the first one is reducing the number of employees.
- the second phase will be about reducing the cost of software.
Microsoft is as always very expensive, even though the cost of their development has been largely returned.
I think they will need to reduce the price of their software, or the next years will be difficult for them, especially when competing with free software.
Windows 7 can run on a Netbook. Vista can't.
Until they release software that can compete with Linux on the netbook field (resource usage, anyway), they will *have* to keep Windows XP available.
After that however, Windows 7 looks poised to be a good netbook OS, since the beta specs run at 512 RAM quite well, and the ATOM processor runs Windows 7 just fine.
That said, Linux netbook return rates are very high (I guess largely due to misunderstanding about operating systems when purchasing), and MS is looking to capitalize on it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Keep in mind that "cautiously favorable" simply means that "Windows 7 is not Vista."
I'm trying to find some official Microsoft link/story about this extension. Can anyone find it? I can't. I am wondering if this is fake?
Why can't they just sell it in frickin stores? When you sell the copies to computer manufacturers, they end up bundling other useless crap with the OS.
When will they learn that some people just want a squeaky clean version of XP?
when you take it from my cold, dead hands.
Windows XP is all the 32 bit OS anyone should ever need. It's fast, and pretty much scales as far as 32 bit will go. Windows 7 better have an option to be as sleek and unobtrusive as Windows XP. They lost me 2 years ago when I switched to Linux, but I spent 5 years learning the ins and outs of XP so it's almost as comfortable as my custom Fluxbox configuration (which took me all of a week to get to a reasonably functional level.)
Anyway, even if it does, $150+ is way to much to pay for an OS that has regressions in functionality (whether coming from XP or Linux, this is definitely the case on Vista, and I'd expect it for 7.)
An OS is worth about $50. Don't get me wrong, I understand the energy that goes into optimizing it. But it's unnecessary. I've used new Macs running quad cores, I've run new Fedora machines running the same, I've used Vista... sparingly, and I have to say, the performance gains of the past 4 years over my single-core integrated graphics machine are negligible. If I'm paying, I'm paying for security fixes and continued driver support plain and simple. I have yet to see anyone give me something that so blows away Windows XP that it really sounds like it's worth more than $50.
I sense a future cartoon. Guy brings home a pretty young thing wearing a W7 shirt. He sits down, gets cozy with her, but then what's this? Her face is starting to peel in the corner. She reaches up, grabs the flap of skin and pulls it away to reveal the snarling lizard face of Ann Coulter below it! "HISSSS!" she says. "Not Coulter! Vista!" Aiyeee!
If Microsoft can't get ahead of the "lipstick on a pig" bad press, W7 will go the way of Vista. And I don't think anybody's really being fooled at this point.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
So everyone will be screwed again?
When's the last time MS shipped an OS on the date it announced that it would?
So instead of one problem ("migrate to Vista or stick with XP?") IT departments will now have a second question to answer ("skip Vista and wait for W7 or not?"). I'm sure they'll be happy like it were christmas. :-)
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Since Windows 7 is mostly changes in the upper layers of the gui in Vista wouldnt bet it wont suck. The crappy drivers for Vista will most certainly crap out just as much on Win 7 as they do on Vista. Last i heard where supposed to use Vista drivers in Win 7.
Also, since the underlying issues arent solved performance gains will be small and the whole DRM crap is still in there slowing everything down. Any fixes arent really fixes but rather all sorts of ways of hiding performance problems from the user.
In short, Windows 7 is very, very close to being Windows Vista SP2.
HTTP/1.1 400
I'm not a fan of vista by ne means, but I do use server 2008 on my laptop (Damn sony with no xp drivers for ne thing)... (yes ubuntu is also on the computer and works great) any ways server is vista with out much of vista enabled.
Install server 2008, enable what you want to use (sound, wifi, stuff you need) get a copy from Microsoft website (there is no reason to pirate it, you get 240 day trial (can rearm it 3 times) and if you search Google, there is a power point out there with some "tips" to make it last longer then the 240 days.
btw (I used all my vista drivers and worked great, because again it is vista with out the crap enabled)
I normally do a wipe every 6 months anyways just because I install ton o crap ne ways and always like to do a fresh install of the latest and greatest of ubuntu :) might as well add a fresh copy of server
Why doesn't apple step up and sell OS-X lisences to bussiness and OEM manufactures? They could be killing MS in the market right now.
I am no 'fanboi' and I do think microsoft may be a monopoly de facto, but that is not in itself illegal.
what a monopoly de jure chooses to do with it's powerful position in the marketplace can be found illegal in some countries- not all.
However your argument sucks.
Microsoft is so entrenched, and so anti-standards, that your data and business operations are held hostage. You can't escape the Widows lock-in without paying a lot of money and abandoning some of your core applications.
so spend the goddamn money.. it's only a monopoly as long as your mindset of 'paying a lot of money' is the barrier.
just because something is "very fucking expensive" is not a reason to legislate it out of existence- it is a reason to accept or reject it.
FREE MARKET
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This isn't so wonderful if XP costs you an additional $150 (hello, Dell) over the Vista that you don't even want, but are forced to take as well. The previous $50 downgrade was just about palatable, but forcing you to virtually buy 2 OSs when you're only running one has got to be a Microsoft wetdream.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I personally avoided XP until SP2, I'm looking forward to Vista SP2, or 7, or whatever as long as it fixes the last of the glaring problems(network file transfer speeds).
I already know how to disable the myriad of useless services and features, it's a very popular trick/service.
When I turn off someone's gluttonous Aero features, they didn't care about eye candy enough to notice a difference, besides how much faster it now does what they WANT it to do.
I'm yet to find a non-tech customer that doesn't hate Vista's file organization, as well.(where's the other download folder? Do I need all those folders in MY Documents? Are they not MYne anymore? How to find anything in the start-menu? And as always: can you turn off this annoying(overly-persistent) UAC?(Universal Accept Conditioner)
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
All the Ui concept overhaul did add to the time to learn vista a new, AND it did not simplify functionality. Example : the detail display of names in explorer. The name , date and size were always in neat column. Wanna see more character ? just draw the column "line" to the right. And when you come back to the directory, the lsit is there as you left it. With Vista the column are not aligned. Leaving the directory and coming back i have again to go into "detaiL" and half assed vista sometimes do not propose me "size" and "date" immediately. Heck even when I open a file and in the open-dialogue I ask for detail, I can't draw the name column properly to enlarge names.
It might be that I missed some setup somewhere, but to have it suck that badly... I wish tehre would be a way to say "I want to have an XP UI".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
These days, it's pretty much guaranteed that any PC you buy at retail will have Vista on it. Microsoft has done a pretty good job of addressing Vista performance concerns. I hear the newest service pack is pretty good.
However, how many IT people out there are dealing with a large number of older systems? For us, it really comes down to this -- we can potentially run Vista on a fair number of our systems. Others are right in the middle of the XP system requirements (P4, 512 MB RAM.) So which do we choose?
We're just small enough to not really have a formal hardware refresh cycle, so this is a major concern for us. Windows 7 will probably have the same problems regarding hardware resources. Do you put up with lousy performance on some of your machines, or stick with good performance overall?
I earn my living supporting a few Vista laptops used by some impatient execs so I know of what I speak.
I have had absolutely no issue with it.
Well, then I'm not sure you do much with either then. There are user issues and oh there are plenty. I'll hit the highlights for you.
1. Copying large files. Why so slow? Execs want to check email while opening the latest *large* spreadsheet off the network. The dual-core 2GB RAM equipped nice laptop grinding to a halt is an issue.
2. UAC. After the first complaint I disabled it. Nevermind that UAC isn't sudo. Security is NOT shifting the responsibility of security onto the user. "Are you sure?" is not security. It's a blame-shifting mechanism and they paid handsomely for it.
3. Why is it **so** slow and suck **so** much battery power doing nothing? The disk thrashing is annoying to me, but they don't seem to notice it. The execs had way more battery time on their old XP's and they know the difference.
Vista has been far more stable than both of these,
That is a lie. Or, maybe you are using some kind of special Bill-Clinton-legal-gymnastical definition of "stable." It's one thing to prefer Vista over a Mac or Linux distro. It is another thing entirely to lie about the other OS's you do not prefer. At this point you have lost all credibility and believability.
and the support is no contest.
Another Clintonian definition of the word support perhaps? Is it the *fabulous* phone support from script readers to configure your printer? Mac users get that too. Most on slashdot have moved way, way beyond phone CSR.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
It makes me feel all warm inside. Merry Christmas Slashdot.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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Really, it's stable on my hardware, it boots in about 20 seconds, it takes any media i can toss at it, works with all my new and old software and peripherals. The only thing "bad" I can say about it is the interface looks a bit dated compared to OSX or KDE4... All it needs is some polishing and Mythbusters have already shown one can polish a turd, so get polishing Microsoft.
I'd say that it needs to as good as WinXP.
Otherwise Microsoft is going to be facing another wave of people demanding that sales of WinXP be extended again.
And from their perspective, why not? Why should they be forced to "license" (not purchase) a product that they see as inferior to the last product they "licensed" from that vendor? Particularly since there will, once again, be all kinds of "legacy" compatibility problems that enterprise customers love so much.
That menu feature has been around for a long while. It doesn't need a search service running all of the time for it either on Linux.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
2. UAC. After the first complaint I disabled it. Nevermind that UAC isn't sudo. Security is NOT shifting the responsibility of security onto the user. "Are you sure?" is not security. It's a blame-shifting mechanism and they paid handsomely for it.
UAC is essentially identical in concept and implementation to sudo (albeit somewhat more automated and intelligent). Why do you think it's different ?
boy, i cant understand why and how you americans use 'suck tit' as a swear word.
i mean, if you dont want to suck tits, im ALL up for it, outsource it to me. in fact, i can cater to all the tit suckin needs of entire world, if its needed.
how many tits you have sucked lately that you are despising the 'tit sucking' process ?
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back in dos4, me days, computers were not this entrenched in daily lives of everyone, and every business. and it was not this kind of hassle to upgrade them, for there werent many stuff running on them already. most of the info processing and database processing stuff were running on old terminals like as400 and whatnot.
today its a huge deal. you cant just forget.
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.. In fact our Fabrication department would probably be better off with free software ..
It's nice to see companies, such as yours, naming their departments correctly and honestly. Most other companies would call it "Legal department".
You can safely skip every other one in the series.
No. Maybe the geek community won't "trust" MS, but then again that is not news (though plenty geeks use MS products regularly). Businesses will use WIndows 7 without any questions. Their only concern is the money spent.
they didnt use vista without any questions. in fact, many of them didnt use it at all.
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Vista isn't any less stable than XP, if you ask me. By that I mean that for as long as it has existed, the number of crashes or other instabilities (not counting third-party application bugs) I've seen in Vista is exactly the same as in XP: zero equals zero.
The only negative thing that can be said about it, is that it requires a ton of resources - but that was to be expected. Win2000 needed more than NT4, XP more than 2000, Vista more than XP. Each of those times, what was decent hardware for one OS became the bare minimum for the next.
I think the reason why people hate it the most is UAC with its extra dialogs, and I can easily imagine someone confusing that with instability - because I've seen it happen.
Someone at work (who calls himself a software engineer nonetheless, writes small device firmware in assembler, but at PC level knows nothing but VB, and even that only half-assed) saw an UAC pop-up on my machine shortly after I installed the first Vista in the company. He immediately went out to tell everyone (behind my back, as usual for him) that he had seen "Vista crash" and that I was a moron for wanting to use it. That while he himself refuses to even look at Linux because it's too difficult, and still runs Windows 95 on one of his own boxes because he's afraid some DOS-based programs he wrote in Clipper 15 years ago will stop working if he upgrades.
I mean, if even a professional - be it one I wouldn't hire - thinks an UAC popup is an error message, calls it a crash, what must non-IT professionals think?
UAC is essentially identical in concept and implementation to sudo
No. It's not. UAC is expressly designed to shift the responsibility for security onto the user. "Are you sure?" User clicks yes and Microsoft has shifted accountability to the user. It is brilliant in an evil way.
(albeit somewhat more automated and intelligent).
helloworld.c is automated and intelligent too. That doesn't make it equivalent to sudo. Please stop trolling.
http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/sudoers.html
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
No. It's not. UAC is expressly designed to shift the responsibility for security onto the user. "Are you sure?" User clicks yes and Microsoft has shifted accountability to the user. It is brilliant in an evil way.
Please explain how this is any different to a sudo prompt that pops up in OS X when, say, an installer is run.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "shift the responsibility for security onto the user", etc. The responsibility for security (in this context) is *always* on the end user, and always has been. UAC (along with sudo, and similar tools) just make it easier for them.
helloworld.c is automated and intelligent too. That doesn't make it equivalent to sudo. Please stop trolling.
I've done more than enough large-scale sudo implementations to know what it is and how it works (and how it doesn't work).
Every major corporation who would be willing to buy new volume licenses usually make it a policy to wait until the first service pack of any OS to do a full upgrade. No one is going to jump to 7 just because Microsoft says it's solid. I worked with a guy who evaluated Vista for one of their biggest partners, and he flat out told me that Vista didn't meet their basic security requirements (no matter how much the MS shills say it's secure). I can't imagine that 7 is going to be secure enough from the get go, either.
Not necessarily.
You don't go and move the drivers seat to the front of the car because it allows the driver to see better.
You don't swap pedals because you find that the average person's right foot has a better response time, stronger muscles and is therefore better suited for braking.
You don't sell cars in the US with metric only readings on the dashboard because it's a better system.
(non-car)
You don't replace all your chairs at work because you read that employees work better sitting in bean bags.
You don't go swap everyone's keyboard to an alternate layout because you saw research that said it's less stressing to the hand and faster.
There are some things that people are used to and changing it would invalidate all things a person learned. It also invalidates all help features on the web that have been compiled for the novice users. Even though it's a different OS, doesn't mean you need to take the familiarity and throw it out the window.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
that by the end of June we'll have new Mac commercials? I love those, they're funny!
I'm running Windows XP SP3 MUI in qemu on FreeBSD/amd64 7.1-PRERELEASE, and it runs flawlessly.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
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Enough people have asked loudly and clearly enough for XP that you can still buy a new system with it:
example : http://www.dell.com/vostro
he isnt talking about tits but he is using the metaphor for it. so, 'sucks tit' being a negative statement in america is one of the most appalling things about america in my perspective in the first place.
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Bare with me, as this will seem somewhat like a rant, but it is a valid list of concerns I'd like to see addressed in Windows 7.
On the bright side, Vista wasn't all bad. The search bar is a great feature. Unfortunately I can't really think of any other really great features that I liked in Vista that you didn't get with XP. I actually did use it for over a year on 4 home machines (3 laptops and one desktop). I now have it on a single laptop for support for my family, so I've been using it since it released
As to what I hated, the list is a bit longer:
Can't customize the explorer bar like you could with XP (I really miss having the Delete button on there, or the ability to add it). Why did they remove that functionality?
Hard drive thrashes constantly. I HATE that, and it's all just in case I might use a program. Most people use 3-4 apps tops. We don't need 2 gigs of ram filled up with useless data. I also don't like the fact that it's putting all of that wear on my home PC. If it was a server, I wouldn't be overly concerned, but cheapo (read: non-server) store bought hard drives DO fail, and this certainly can't help.
My home desktop WD's failed within 2 years. Whether this is related to the Vista install or something else I don't know, but Western Digital drives have typically been problem free for me over the years. It was the first time I'd had one fail so young. I had repeated failures on the same desktop a year later.
I hate the networking config. It takes far to many levels just to get to a network connection properties. It's very unintuitive. I can only assume that the person who designed that part of the UI never actually needed it. XP was easy. Right click 'network' icon and select needed area from properties. If your a heavy wireless user on a laptop, this is important and it's key for me considering the wireless glitchiness I continue to experience under SP1
My Vista installs constantly create multiple copies of the wireless config I use, and those often refuse to connect, causing me to constantly have to go in and clean them up and recreate the needed profile. Sometimes it just refuses to connect all together for seemingly no reason. Could be driver related, but then again, the profile issue wouldn't seem to be since I'm using Vista to manage my connections. It shouldn't be so problematic.
Wireless transfers in general is still very flakey, even post SP1. I can put a vista machine on my wireless and if I connect it using 54n at 240Mb, it will crash my router within a few minutes on any big transfer (I'm talking 1GB+ of data). This doesn't happen with XP, OS X, or Kubuntu. I regularly transfer large video's over wireless. This is a real show stopper. I am not the only one with this issue. Over a year of looking for a fix and high hopes for SP1 and still no resolution.
Permissions Issues - Ok, so this one is more of a vendor issue, but if MS had stood up to the vendors and forced them to properly code their apps for a multiuser environment, it wouldn't be such an issue. I can't name the number of times apps didn't work, wouldn't install, wouldn't uninstall, etc because permissions were set improperly.
Slow Boot Times - Vista starts out great, for the first few weeks. They tweaked it so that it appears to boot the desktop in 20-30 seconds. That doesnt' make the desktop usable however. It quickly degenerates into a mind numbingly slow boot, even with the startup services trimmed to bare minimum using MSCONFIG or CCleaner. It boots up the desktop pretty fast, although I wouldn't call it 'useable' until 30-40 seconds after that. Throw in a virus scanner, firewall, and adware/spyware blocker and it's hosed for a good minute. Totally unacceptable considering what you can get with Linux or Leopard.
Windows Update Issues - I also had (and still have) endless update issues where they simply start failing, requiring me to google for some obscure 'failure' code only to find out that there is no immediate
The responsibility for security (in this context) is *always* on the end user, and always has been.
Erm. No. This is the point where you and I agree to disagree. That kind of disasterous thinking is the epitome of the broken window fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
UAC (along with sudo, and similar tools)
Please stop comparing sudo and UAC as being somehow alike. Retelling this lie is disingenuous and dangerously misleads consumers and employers.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Well if someone can explain me, why if most people hate so much vista and for matters everything related, they try really really really REALLY hard to make xp looks and works like vista ?.
I feel that this move is a good one and that somehow relates to the Win ME lifecycle, even if there's people ranting about the comparison, I know there is a lot of people here that actually likes vista, but I also know people that Actually likes Win ME, that goes as far as saying that it is the best OS that they have used and even I have a computer that runs beautifully with Windows ME, just like if the machine was meant for that OS, that doesn't mean its a great OS. Lets face it.. a computer with windows XP does the same thing a vista one does but with much less memory and processing power, and if you upgrade the memory so it matches the Vista requirements then you can have a blazing fast XP machine. I remember my first encounter with Vista, trying to make a new laptop work with the networked printer in the office, should be as easy or even easier than in windows xp isn't it? well.. the fact is that it was not, I finally had to get into google and look for a similar problem, the solution? adding the printer as a local one even if it wasn't and then changing the port to a network route, WTF? that is the behavior of a sucking ass OS and you can't convince me it is not I can add network printers in any win32 system from win95 to winxp flawlessly and then vista can't? Then I have to add that it is annoying to have it asking for absolutely everything, from opening a damn website to changing the desktop theme, I know they say its a way to keep the system safe but it doesn't solve anything, making a good rootkit or trojan leaves all the annoying questions to the user, the malware will bypass it anyway. I hope that Windows 7 is as good as XP has been, because Vista has never been my cup of tea, and from Microsoft's move I can see it isn't a lot of people's either. That doesn't mean that Vista can't run wonderfully in your hardware, congratulations, I also have a PC that runs with Windows ME better than with any other OS you could put on it.
MS doesn't care, they're being dragged kicking and screaming...
Let's wait for windows 7 and see if it gets delieverd on time. The lets see how much people want to use it. If windows 7 also fails, they better extends the support a couple of years extra...
So basically Ultimate (or Vista in general) is worth the extra cash because it allows people to indiscriminately overwrite important files without regard to their accuracy, importance or completeness.... And another of your Vista's highlight is the fact that it also allows people to spread their files and folders around the filesystem without any sensible concern about where a particular document should be saved.
That's both lazy and sloppy.
Call me Old School, but if one needs this much babysitting when using a PC, one should go back to the ease of pencil and paper and save some serious cash.
WinXP (and even Win2K) is fine!
all i hope about w7 is that they don't rush it like they did with vista/me, etc. they need a long, long time to get 7 out, and i'd personally rather wait for something good than have complete crap now.
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
It's not a lie (well, alright, it may or may not be a lie) - it mostly depends on the hardware the GP used.
See, the thing with Vista is that it does indeed run great - on the right hardware. And die horribly on the wrong kind. The "right" kind tends to be recently released high-end PCs and laptops that come with Vista preinstalled (I'm not saying that all of them work fine, just that the chance of getting it work is higher in that category). The biggest chunk of the "wrong" kind is hardware from before, or shortly after, the Vista release.
I have both kinds: 1 PC and 2 laptops; the 1 laptop that came with Vista preinstalled really works great, no complaints there; the other laptop, an old Thinkpad for which Lenovo had nonetheless released a full set official Vista drivers, had problems with video card, and generally ran Vista very slow even once upgraded to on 1.5Gb RAM; the desktop with a mix of "old" and "new" hardware, mostly works fine, but has problems with sleep & hibernate (presumably because of the motherboard, which is "old").
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Please explain how they are not alike, then. I've read this entire thread, and, despite been asked to explain twice, you haven't done so, instead repeating the claim that the other poster is "trolling". He isn't - he is politely asking you to explain the difference, which you profusely refuse to do. I'm inclined to believe that you, in fact, are the one trolling here, but I'll reserve my judgement in hope of ultimately seeing a detailed, argumentative response as to how Vista UAC is different from sudo as used in e.g Linux and OS X.
Good Grief, Man, how long of an 'Incubation Period' does Linux need?? I've been using it on and off for over 15 years!
MacOS X.x.x users have been using a derived version of FreeBSD for over 5 years. How much more maturation does it need??
Erm. No.
Yes, it is. Or are you somehow trying to argue the responsibility for running 'sudo rm -rf /' does NOT fall on the user doing it ?
Please stop comparing sudo and UAC as being somehow alike. Retelling this lie is disingenuous and dangerously misleads consumers and employers.
Then explain how they're different, if you're so sure they are.
If you think this is because customers like XP over Vista, you're fooling yourself. This is because Netbooks have become a very valuable commodity. Vista runs horribly on netbooks; Microsoft would rather keep selling XP than risk losing that market share to an OS like Ubuntu. Once their newer, more responsive Windows comes out, and dual-core Atoms are available, they'll stop selling XP immediately.
Considering that Vista is a beta version of Windows 7, I wreckon that Vista->Windows 7 should be a free upgrade...
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
Since there is no hyphen between "virtual" and "desktop", the "virtual" modifies "monopoly".
Exactly how I felt about Windows 2000 when XP was released...
That's where the key difference lies. /.ers and other IT geeks feel that the whole situation is copy pasted from latest time :
Most
An old, considered good, version of Windows (back then : Windows 2k SP4, now : Windows XP Pro SP3) getting replaced by something in which everyone fails to see one single advantage (back then : Win XP Pro, now : Windows Vista).
Well, what we have to keep in mind is that was only the situation for IT geeks.
Back then what Joe 6-pack had to endure was ... Windows ME ! (gasp)
For most of the general population, Windows XP Home - no matter if lacking interesting features over Win2k - was replacing what was considered the worst ever OS produced by Microsoft.
People had an incentive to switch to XP (even if geeks didn't have): it was a saviour after the latest home version of the OS.
Whereas today, NOBODY (except a few DX10-addicted hardcore gamers) really needs to switch. The situation for Vista acceptance is even worse.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'll take vulnerabilities in the new API for $200, Alex.
That feature sounds neat. Let's hope they manage to get that to ship instead of laying off the team. It sounds like getting definitive testing of that feature would require quite a long time to do right. It would be a drag if a lot of work got lost because the system lost track of a commit or something like that.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
just because something is "very fucking expensive" is not a reason to legislate it out of existence- it is a reason to accept or reject it.
It is if it it makes competition virtually impossible. That's why we have the laws that we do.
I disagree in the strongest of terms- expense to market entry/exit is not itself a actionable reason to look to anti-monopoly law
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=175
Here's just one of many salient quotes "Even in a standard user world, he stressed that malware can still read all the user's data; can still hide with user-mode rootkits; and can still control which applications (anti-virus scanners) the user can access."
Sadly, I'm modded troll for decimating the perception of security in Vista when it's out there for all to see.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The thing is XP also stank, and ME stank before that. Plus people were gouged with "Software Assurance" or "Licensing 6.0" or whatever you want to call it. People are really fed up with Microsoft! People are starting to code to standards and targeting multiple platforms and are ignoring MS's extensions. The next time companies upgrade it will be to something non-MS.
Not only that, your average computer tinkerer is no longer interested in MS as it only means removing viruses or helping them figure out how to email their photos, it's just not interesting to your average geek anymore. Power users interested in learning and tweaking are going to Linux, they're just not interested in helping Windows users anymore, and MS's tech support is not going to satisfy these people. Things are just snowballing in a way MS cannot control anymore.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=175
Even in a standard user world, he stressed that malware can still read all the user's data; can still hide with user-mode rootkits; and can still control which applications (anti-virus scanners) the user can access.
Please explain to me how, *exactly*, malware can execute and then control the system in user mode in OSX or Linux.
Until you accept the incontrovertible fact, as they are, out there for all to see, that UAC IS NOT sudo.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I wouldn't expect this sort of major features to appear in Win7 now - it's really more of an incremental release.
And this major feature is used in MS apps outside of the core OS, then I'm sure it's well documented somewhere, so competing developers can apply it, right?
Right? Because otherwise that's a continuing antitrust issue.
Thanks for confirming that Win7 is an incremental release from Vista. That's probably not going to help the product's marketing any, but at least you can be forthright about that. For a while there I was afraid MS might have gone with a marketing strategy more like "this thing is NOTHING like that other one that you hate so much." Now that we know it's Vista++, we know ahead of time how to feel about it. The other strategy might have had a chance, even if it was less honest.
Help stamp out iliturcy.