Slashdot Mirror
Vista Post-SP2 Is the Safest OS On the Planet
pkluss noted Kevin Turner, COO of Microsoft making the proclamation that "Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."
"Vista today, post-Service Pack 2, which is now in the marketplace, is the safest, most reliable OS we've ever built. It's also the most secure OS on the planet, including Linux and open source and Apple Leopard. It's the safest and most secure OS on the planet today."
See any serious problems with this story?
Do I see any serious problems with this story? Uh, yeah, maybe one or two...
I'm not sure why this is news - MS says this about every OS release they put out...
"Do I see any serious problems with this story? Uh, yeah, maybe one or two..."
How about the fact tha Vista SP2 is not "in the marketplace" at all.
It hasn't been released yet and is still an RC candidate in beta testing!
If Microsoft wants to compare imaginary not yet released software to actual software, I set let them and Google play games with beta releases. The rest of us have actual work to do.
And XP is slower than 2k.
And 2k is slower than NT4.
More functionality means less performance. Doesn't matter much. Vista on my i7 is still faster than XP on my old 4 year old Athlon machine.
For a home user, there are currently few advantages in using Vista, even though there are many under-the-hood optimizations that may help them.
As such, i would not recommend a home user to go through the effort of upgrading his existing machine to Vista. At this time, that machine is likely to be over 2 years old.
However, when deciding to buy a new machine, why use an 8-9 year old operating system? There is no reason for a home user to not use Vista on a new machine.
Security has to be designed in.
When Microsoft deployed ActiveX installation and launch over HTTP and email with Active Desktop in 1997 they made Windows inherently insecure in a way that nobody had ever imagined anyone would be stupid enought to do. In fact it used to be a joke, the "Good Times" virus... a virus so effective it would run without you even opening the email message it was contained in. EVERYONE knew it was a joke, because EVERYONE knew nobody would be so stupid as to deliberately allow untrusted content to automatically run.
Nobody but Microsoft was that stupid, anyway.
Jesus Christ, man, the fundamental desing of Internet Explorer is so f-ing bad that over 10 years later I am STILL aghast that ANYONE would defend it, or any OS that depends on it. What the HELL are you smoking? DO you honestly not understand just how amazingly stupid this is? Honestly? By the bowels of Christ, consider that you might be mistaken.
Hmmh. You may be right. Given that everyone downgrading from VISTA to XP is--almost by definition--a Windows user, what does this say about Windows-lover's opinion of VISTA? Here, have a couple of "meaningless" anecdotes ;-)
:-)
Meaningless Anecdote 1: One of my colleagues went to upgrade to VISTA a few days back. I'm only surprised it took him so long, as he has been dutifully following the MS upgrade treadmill since before WIN95, a Windows-lover's Windows-lover. VISTA refused to install on a 2.2GHz AMD64 with 2GB RAM. He is such a happy camper he started asking me about Linux. He is also tired of viruses, spyware worms etc. I burned the 5.3 LiveDVD of Scientific Linux for him, so he can see if he likes it and wants to install it.
Meaningless Anecdote 2 I installed Zenwalk Linux on my 79 year old Mom's compromised (by malware) XP computer two weeks ago. She does have an occasional question, however, she's enjoying the use of her computer again.
Have a nice day.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
You know, I work in a retail store as a break/fix monkey. I hardly ever see people downgrading. Most 'regular' people are perfectly fine with Vista. Especially now that hardware has caught up to it.
I'd be really curious to see some actual statistics re: downgrading. I doubt it'd be as high as Slashdot seems to think.
I suggest reading the docs BEFORE accusing people of not knowing what they are talking about. You probably don't recall but there was a lot of discussion about this bizzare counterproductive feature of superfetch at the time Vista was released and it's all explained quite well on Microsoft's technet site.
So they're saying that their client OS vista is more secure than windows 2008?
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