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Microsoft To End Support For Windows Vista In Less Than a Month (pcworld.com)
In less than a month's time, Microsoft will put Windows Vista to rest once and for all. If you're one of the few people still using it, you have just a few weeks to find another option before time runs out. (I mean, nobody will uninstall it from your computer, but.) From a report on PCWorld: After April 11, 2017, Microsoft will no longer support Windows Vista: no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates, Microsoft says. (Mainstream Vista support expired in 2012.) Like it did for Windows XP, Microsoft has moved on to better things after a decade of supporting Vista. As Microsoft notes, however, running an older operating system means taking risks -- and those risks will become far worse after the deadline. Vista's Internet Explorer 9 has long since expired, and the lack of any further updates means that any existing vulnerabilities will never be patched -- ever. Even if you have Microsoft's Security Essentials installed -- Vista's own antivirus program -- you'll only receive new signatures for a limited time.
It was more secure than Linux. Literally every time I tried anything on the standard Vista install on my brand new Dell, it froze or crash. No way an attacker could take that over.
I agree, your computer looks clean.
Though I would change that background image, every time I use it as a jump host to do my ... work I get kinda distracted by the babe.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is actually going to be the real problem here.
Retiring Vista is no biggie. I don't know anyone who didn't immediately replace Vista with Seven as soon as it became available. On the other hand, I can also not name that many people who replaced 7 with 8 once that hit the market. Even with 8.1, the amount of people who made the switch is rather low. And I know a lot of people and companies, myself and my company included, that rely heavily on Win7 even today. On the other hand, I do not know any large companies that embraced Win8/8.1 in any way and the acceptance of Win10 so far is, at best, lukewarm, at worst hostile with a big "when hell freezes over" stamp from the CISO.
More recently our development department even started to look around for a replacement of VS15, with the Telemetry blunder in VS15SP2 the switch to VS17 is not a given as it was in the years before from 10 to 13 and to 15. And I dare say we're not alone. CISOs talk. And I'm not the only one who is very unhappy with the direction Microsoft is heading. A simple Win10 rollout as it had been in the past with MS systems where the main concern was whether the key applications will run on the new platform will certainly not happen. This will at the very least include a lengthy and probably quite costly security audit as well. And not even whether it's secure against someone breaking in, more concerning the data that leaves the machine towards Redmond.
You can see that reflected in changes in bidding catalogs as well. More and more you find demands that software development has to be "OS agnostic" or they demand outright that a client has to be provided for Windows and Linux. My guess is that quite a few companies that I have to deal with are at the very least pondering whether it might be possible to think about considering leaving the Windows platform.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I sincerely doubt the UIs are getting worse year after year. If that were the case, we would have unusable devices by now.
What is really happening is that people are resisting change. The new thing is different---unfamiliar and possibly confusing. That doesn't mean it's worse, but it does mean people will react negatively.
A good UI is difficult. It needs to meet a lot of goals:
*It must expose typical functions with a minimal number of key presses or mouse clicks, yet not overwhelm the user with too many options or unclear organization.
*It should be reasonably configurable, yet it should be consistent enough that developers can rely on some essential elements.
*It should be simple enough for a basic user to grasp intuitively, but it must accommodate a wide range of users and tasks.
Each of those goals is a balancing act, and any change pushes that balance in a way that demands adaptation from either users, administrators, or developers. Of course people are going to be upset.
The initial round of upset, ranting, and whining is virtually irrelevant. If complaints remain after sustained use of the new UI, then it's time to reevaluate. The real measure of a UI is how upset people are when it comes vs when it goes.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.