What the article doesn't talk about is proprietary inhouse apps and customized add ons and other software packages that meets needs of businesses.
You can't get anything like that unless you pay money. That is economics 101 and Linux is not 100% free. It cost money as 90% of the code is donated by SGI, IBM, Redhat, and others. That money came from paying customers and it is nice cheapskates get a freebie and student can learn it in the process.
To protect agaisn't piracy makes sense if it costs $10 million to write a game then you sure as hell do not give it away! If you want it you have to pay for it as the developers, shareholders, and their development tools were not free.
Try running turnkey linux in a VM. That is what I do as I do not have time to rewipe my system by fucking it up. The appliances are basically setup stacks ready to go and you simply change the username and password.
Windows just works on the desktop but some php and other code is only available or works much better on Linux unfortunately.
What about the harmful effects of software not being developed that meets a businesses needs? If you do not pay for it it doesn't get developed.
People say yeah linux can do everything Windows can do or clueless. Redhat, IBM, and thousands of others donate and develop code for Linux so you can use it on a server at work.
The 100% no non free code linux kernel was 200k in the 1990s and unpractical. Just because it was given away doesn't mean it was free to make. More to the point Windows meets the needs much better than Linux to desktop users because they are willing to pay Microsoft to fine tune and make sure it works right on their pc. You do not have to worry an update will hose your system due to the lack of an ABI or some weird wifi will randomly disconnect (issue with my laptop with linux).
What is so evil about getting paid? If you need shit done you provide value to barter that we call call cash in exchange for their labor. That is capitalism 101 and is the most efficient system.
All this non free software is worth every penny for those who need JIT inventory in Access/SQL Server to the accountant who purchases statistical add on packages for Excel so his employer can pay him. If you do not like it go get a job or write your own solution.
Also someone should get paid handsomely for his or her contribution and there is nothing wrong with that.
To keep supporting newer hardware you end up making something thats not XP anymore.
This is why IE 9 can not be backported to XP. It is not because MS wants you to use Vista or Win 7, but rather the security sandboxing is Vista+ only. h.264 requires DRM in the driver and GDI in XP can't do it, etc.
Now you have SSDs coming out and the paging algorithm in XP will kill it fast! It is not as simple as adding TRIM support to the XP kernel. If you add all of these things to support newer browser security and hardware you end up with Vista/win 7 lite.
Why not just use Windows 7 then? Technology is changing and just like the other post today about DPI greater than 100, the problem is XP! We have terrible screen resolutions today and can't upgrade because these users wont change or leave XP and applications will look funy and stretched otherwise because VB 6 apps and others expect 1990s hardware and DPIs etc. The programs look like crap if you use a monitor and resolution other than 100 DPI.
Just upgrade and stop making excuses for the beancounters. Windows 7 offers more than eye candy as I mentioned above are just 2 out of many things a more modern infrastructure can do and you do not have to wait 10 minutes before you computer is usable anymore in the mornings booting up, or the other issues XP has.
Here is something I cut and pasted from a post earlier this week because the benefits over XP are HUGE:
"Off the top of my head Windows 7 offers
Security wise - Offers better process and privileged seperation with much more secure services to prevent exploits - UAC - Secure boot for 64 bit version to prevent rootkits - Signed drivers in 64 bit to prevent malware and rootkits - Full DEP for all services and not just some - ASLR random memory addressing to prevent a peak and poke exploit to execute malware - Improved sandboxing using ASLR for Internet explorer - VS 2010 has secure exception handling to prevent buffer overflows and data execution and it comes with IE 9
Performance - MUCH improved SMP and scalability support for Phenom IIs, Icore5s and Icore 7s. - No more n^o paging for swap HELL even if the system has lots of free ram (correct me as I forgot the NT algorithm for paging that was replaced) - SATA/PATA command queing async support rather than single sync - GPU support for business graphics in aero. THis is usefull is you do things like desktop publishing or multi media heavy powerpoint slides - H.264 support with full hardware acceleration - USB 3 support - Thunderbolt support - Sleep mode instead of hibernation - UEFI secure boot (I know this one is political) But nice if you want to be rootkit free
Usability - Aero peak lets you use the cursor to scroll over minimized programs and IE tabs and it will show a small preview. I use this everyday with lots of things running - Aero has a side by side feature where you can drag things left or right so you can have one document next to another. I think its called Aero snap - Awesome search feature making start menu obsolete. Just click the Windows key and type ex..."Excel 2010 pops up" and hit enter key!. Shoot what was our sales in assets in 2009? Type WIndows key and "Sales assets 2009" and viola excel and word files show up with those key phrases. When I was in college I had hundres of excel and word documents and switched back to slow Vista just for this feature. Fucking cool to reference things. This day I panic when I go back to XP. I am so used to typing Windows key cmd in 1/5 of a second to open a command prompt etc. You will hate XP after trying this - clear aero means you can see Windows behind Windows - Saved searches - Version of IE that doesn't suck and has hardware accelerated graphics and Firefox 3.6 support of HTML 5, ajax, and css 3. Not too bad and is secure. For offices this is great as these poor saps stuck with IE can at least have a modern web experience of this decade. - Websites can be added to the taskbar as apps. Nice for that salesforce app for work - Jumplist for minimized items. For example I can right click on the CHrome app on the taskbar and select a frequently visited website.
Reliability - Trim support. SSDs only last for a year if you are luck. WIthout Trim the life of a SSD in XP is weeks or months if you have lots of space if you are really lucky. - User mode driver isolation. If a driver fails it wont bluescreen but instead a wizard will pop up and a trouble shooter. The XP ones just had screenshots but the Win 7 will diagnose and even fix a problem - Restore and shadow volumes. THe restore on XP does not really restore other than try to put some files back and forth. Win 7 restore will restore the registry as well and use metadata to recover even deleted items! Very cool indeed
Windows 8 improves (ignoring METRO) in addition to inheriented Windows 7 features
- Windows ToGo so you can boot with a flash drive to fix a system. About damn time as Linux had this since 2005 - Moving profile on a flash drive (forgot term). You can have your whole desktop, metro apps, and even your files and settings moved between work and home. - Remote management and app support without AD or VPN. If you sign on with your tablet or desktop with your corporate email you can have your profile and even
If you look at IT as an investment rather than a cost center you will see it is poor business sense to use decade old hardware and operating systems. For example having employees sit and do nothing for 20 minutes every morning while their machines boot and do a security scan, then for 2 hours their computers are unresponsive as McCrappy does a virus scan each Wednesday costs millions in lost productivity.
XP is not rock solid nor a savoir and neither is IE 6.
The issue I have with VB 6 development is you throw away all those man hours down the toilet when its time to get something new. This leaves the PHBs clamoring for VB 6 still but then you need to update it and you are throwing money down the drain for an obsolete platform long term.
How about these reasons (Cut and pasted from another post I made) because the list is so large... Off the top of my head Windows 7 offers
Security wise - Offers better process and privileged seperation with much more secure services to prevent exploits - UAC - Secure boot for 64 bit version to prevent rootkits - Signed drivers in 64 bit to prevent malware and rootkits - Full DEP for all services and not just some - ASLR random memory addressing to prevent a peak and poke exploit to execute malware - Improved sandboxing using ASLR for Internet explorer - VS 2010 has secure exception handling to prevent buffer overflows and data execution and it comes with IE 9
Performance - MUCH improved SMP and scalability support for Phenom IIs, Icore5s and Icore 7s. - No more n^o paging for swap HELL even if the system has lots of free ram (correct me as I forgot the NT algorithm for paging that was replaced) - SATA/PATA command queing async support rather than single sync - GPU support for business graphics in aero. THis is usefull is you do things like desktop publishing or multi media heavy powerpoint slides - H.264 support with full hardware acceleration - USB 3 support - Thunderbolt support - Sleep mode instead of hibernation - UEFI secure boot (I know this one is political) But nice if you want to be rootkit free
Usability - Aero peak lets you use the cursor to scroll over minimized programs and IE tabs and it will show a small preview. I use this everyday with lots of things running - Aero has a side by side feature where you can drag things left or right so you can have one document next to another. I think its called Aero snap - Awesome search feature making start menu obsolete. Just click the Windows key and type ex..."Excel 2010 pops up" and hit enter key!. Shoot what was our sales in assets in 2009? Type WIndows key and "Sales assets 2009" and viola excel and word files show up with those key phrases. When I was in college I had hundres of excel and word documents and switched back to slow Vista just for this feature. Fucking cool to reference things. This day I panic when I go back to XP. I am so used to typing Windows key cmd in 1/5 of a second to open a command prompt etc. You will hate XP after trying this - clear aero means you can see Windows behind Windows - Saved searches - Version of IE that doesn't suck and has hardware accelerated graphics and Firefox 3.6 support of HTML 5, ajax, and css 3. Not too bad and is secure. For offices this is great as these poor saps stuck with IE can at least have a modern web experience of this decade. - Websites can be added to the taskbar as apps. Nice for that salesforce app for work - Jumplist for minimized items. For example I can right click on the CHrome app on the taskbar and select a frequently visited website.
Reliability - Trim support. SSDs only last for a year if you are luck. WIthout Trim the life of a SSD in XP is weeks or months if you have lots of space if you are really lucky. - User mode driver isolation. If a driver fails it wont bluescreen but instead a wizard will pop up and a trouble shooter. The XP ones just had screenshots but the Win 7 will diagnose and even fix a problem - Restore and shadow volumes. THe restore on XP does not really restore other than try to put some files back and forth. Win 7 restore will restore the registry as well and use metadata to recover even deleted items! Very cool indeed
Windows 8 improves (ignoring METRO) in addition to inheriented Windows 7 features
- Windows ToGo so you can boot with a flash drive to fix a system. About damn time as Linux had this since 2005 - Moving profile on a flash drive (forgot term). You can have your whole desktop, metro apps, and even your files and settings moved between work and home. - Remote management and app support without AD or VPN. If you sign on with your tablet or desktop wi
Microsoft needs to focus on raising its shareprice right now. If Gates & Balmer didn't own a majority stake, Balmer would be canned already.
The stock price has not moved in a decade and investors are getting impatient. They need to save cash, cut expenses, and invest wisely in what will bring back more capital and liquid assets. An expensive several billion buyout will lower the value of the company and hurts its shareprice more.
I do not see the value?
Worse, the other handset makers like HTC will shit their pants that they are supporting a competitor now and will cut Windows Phone sales and focus solely on Andriod. Ala OS/2 syndrome. All OEMs prefered OS/2 over Windows/DOS but they would be supporting IBM and a competitor if they did so they touted the NT and Windows 9x platform instead.
I have to ask? How many tabs do you have open? The most I have ever seen a browser use is maybe 2.5 gigs with 30+ tabs.
At 30+ tabs it is unmanageable as you spend more time tab cycling trying to figure out which one is where etc. WHen you start Office you do not open all +100 files at once do you? That would be insane and this is why the browser is going crazy trying to run 100 web applets at the same time in your browser. FF 12 is the lightest browser I have seen so far and I think it is counter intuitive to open 200 tabs which I assume you are doing to get that 4 gig limit.
The 4 gig limit is because the browser is only 32 bit. Go IE 9 64 bit if you do not mind the shitty javascript interpreter in that version if you want all the tabs in glory.
The idea is to replace it before it dies as you may not get all your data and programs transferred. It really is not that much of a hassle and the situation is only going to get worse as more AJAX uses bloated api's and HTML 5 will cache all the hundreds of megs of images and video per tab. Flash at least downloads it and does not keep all of it in ram at once.
Your machine, but I have not touched a system with that much ram in probably 6 or 7 years at least. I service computers for a living too and I at least see 768 megs. Actually take it back I did use one machine back in 2010 with 512 and that was only to be used as a wifi router on an old recycled machine. Your box is a clunker similar to that Honda you see down the street that is 10 years old that the neighbor just wont throw away yet and is always fixing something breaking on it.
I had a similiar conversation with him to upgrade a few months ago. Now is an excellent time to upgrade before Windows 8 is out if you dual boot. XP is on the way out and its easy to migrate with the easy transfer wizard and there is an XP mode if you upgrade to the pro version.
The web is a platform that constantly upgrades just like an OS. No one is feeding the same IE 6 code that used 40 megs of ram when he bought hos computer 10 years ago. JQuery and jit optimization and high rez graphics take hundreds of megs per tab. As html 5 comes the problem becomes much worse as everything is cached unlike Flash.
Dude the more you spam for it the higher the Google page ranking it gets. Out of curiosity I did a google search for malware and cleanPC was 4 out of the 5 links listed. Good god talk about SEO to the extreme
It is so big it is possible any VM with network access could have received the command to self destruct or maybe it self destructs when it can't find a LAN connection? I would not be surprised.
If this is a real professional job I would not be surprised if it leaves some backdoors opened for another different piece of malware. It wouldn't surprise me if Cisco router rootkits exist. After all evidence points in China they are doing just this, as they did with Nortel routers with a backdoor.
The more I learn about Flame the more it amazes me.
Arstechnica.com has more stories on it and how it worked through collision detection and much more. I am amazed yet worried as I am sure malware mobfia folks are using the source code with real NATO grade malware complete with forging certificates, turning zombies into proxy servers, and using the Md5 collision detection done by professional mathematicians.
Worse Ubuntu and other operating systems can be hit by this as they use the same algorithms for the certificates. This piece of malware was just done through conventional 0 day exploits but rather a very sophisticated means of forging certificates and might have done the cyberworld much more harm.
Yep like Nokia blamed the sales people for why people are not storming into their stores for the WIndows Phone right?
It is never the CEO's or managements fault. I apologize if my posts sound militant but I am tired of working for people like this and seeing those who are paid minimum wage, told to be on call 24 x7 in case someone calls in and can't work another job, and be treated like garbage by people who never worked in retail before now have to worry about job security.
Job insecurity is the worse anxiety I have ever felt. It should be normal if you are incompetent. However, the whole workforce should not feel for it and sacrifice because the economy is shitty and the person making the rules is secure or gets a golden parachute.
Bad management is abound and the frustrating thing is the last CEO worked his way up. Statistically they make the best CEOs out there as they know what it is like to be in front of the customer or in the operations. However, his failure was that he was in sales mode like he was an associate 20+ years ago. That is the trees and not the forest which is seeing customer demand, having a vision, anticipating markets etc. Just SELL SELL SELL.
I can tell you from both experience and this story that the drivers still suck. Maybe just not as much. Nvidia drivers are always much better but the hardware has issues and fails in my experience.
I prefer to fiddle with drivers more until I find the right version and then keep it there. AMD needs to be scalded rather than defended by its users trying to justify their egos.
I plan to scald them as I find no ASLR and Dep unacceptable. I might as well still use XP then.
I am referring to the drivers when I say upgrade. My drivers have to be at 12.3 or the other bugs will pop out with the driver forgetting I have a monitor and not a TV nor aero being disabled after sleeping. It is a driver issue and not a bios thing.
ATI mentioned they are stopping the monthly driver update as so many complaints are out there, on MaximumPC.com.
ASLR is just for the ram on the board and not the video card. We do not have malware on the video card yet... hopefully. It is a big deal if ASLR is disabled on my desktop even if you have a sand boxed browser as malware writers always try to find ways to break out of it and do so every month with new vulnerabilities that need to be repatched. If I owned my own shop and serviced small to medium sized businesses I would even go out of my way to avoid ATI/AMD products or keep them on XP as there is no benefit of changing as ASLR, DEP, and other security is the main selling point to lower TCO.
As an ATI user I will take the commenter's advice and tell ATI to fix their damn driver and backport the Windows 8 one to Windows 7 that is secure. Even if it does slow down performance you have to remember consoles have ASLR ram in their DRM schemes. Too many bad guys out there
I would think that computer program would help as it seems BB sells things for more margin and not want customers want. Or is it like 3 stereos that are value brand and that is it?
I forgot 5 years ago they used to carry 30 of them and did not call them geeksquad. One BB in Alaska is selling lazy boy chairs too. Maybe they are in desperation and each store tries something to see if it sticks and then replicated it nationwide?
I do agree with the appliances. Too many are eating retail space and music is something they need to cut down on as people buy it online or pirate it.
Yep, and I will go elsewhere for my business. Then the MBAs and CEOs can all be dumbfounded on why sales are down and customer surveys say they prefer competitors instead.
They are a retailer and not a bank so if they want to devalue their retail operations go right ahead. idiots
Give me what I want and let me leave in peace or I will take my business elsewhere. Customers are stupid but so are the greedy retailers who saddle Hispanic customers with no English into these deals. Then they are so far in debt they can't afford to become repeat customers. That is penny wise but dollar dumb business where management focuses on the individual sale and losses track of the long term goal.
Not everyone can afford that mac as an example as only the top 25% in this economy who are not straddled with student loans for tens of thousands of dollars and have their house paid off already can do. Most people live paycheck to paycheck and if they need a computer are vulnerable to scammers. If they feel BB is the scammer it will leave a sour taste. I for one can't afford your mac and pay it off in one month. However, I am not stupid and know better than to buy one
Why? THe Apple Store is how to do it if you sell expensive items. Walmart is how you do it for low margin items. The Apple Store pays its employees well, wont push you, gives you an excellent experience for the price.
They are not a loss leader, but rather the opposite. They overcharge and buy the bottom of the barrel out of date things for a high price, then try to nail the customer with geeksquad, then high interest credit cards, then have only one checkout so you are stuck behind a wall of overpriced candy and other items you are likely to buy while you wait and having 1 cashier saves money too.
They are greedy. However supply and demand dictates you either have a low margin and high volume ala Walmart, or you have high margin, low volume like a car dealership. BB is trying to have it both ways by being high volume and high priced for low quality items and are shocked it is not working out! This is why they push GeekSquad to make up for the loss. The last 2 CEOs bombed the company as they were former sales people who can not see the trees from the forest with an emphasis on sell sell sell only and not why and what does the customer want?
Mine stopped carrying them this year. They did have a razer keyboard which had the worst ratings and they stopped carrying the cheaper Logitech ones which are better all because you are statistically less likely to buy a protection plan with it. Not because of demand as low cost items always have the highest demand. BB thinks it is the only retailer so they can warp the supply and demand curves to their liking and management can get this bonus etc.
They are greedy idiots. The customer is part of the equation too which is why they are looking at alternatives. BB assumes its online stores so they now bundle malware BB media store on all laptops and pcs it sells.
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What the article doesn't talk about is proprietary inhouse apps and customized add ons and other software packages that meets needs of businesses.
You can't get anything like that unless you pay money. That is economics 101 and Linux is not 100% free. It cost money as 90% of the code is donated by SGI, IBM, Redhat, and others. That money came from paying customers and it is nice cheapskates get a freebie and student can learn it in the process.
To protect agaisn't piracy makes sense if it costs $10 million to write a game then you sure as hell do not give it away! If you want it you have to pay for it as the developers, shareholders, and their development tools were not free.
Try running turnkey linux in a VM. That is what I do as I do not have time to rewipe my system by fucking it up. The appliances are basically setup stacks ready to go and you simply change the username and password.
Windows just works on the desktop but some php and other code is only available or works much better on Linux unfortunately.
What about the harmful effects of software not being developed that meets a businesses needs? If you do not pay for it it doesn't get developed.
People say yeah linux can do everything Windows can do or clueless. Redhat, IBM, and thousands of others donate and develop code for Linux so you can use it on a server at work.
The 100% no non free code linux kernel was 200k in the 1990s and unpractical. Just because it was given away doesn't mean it was free to make. More to the point Windows meets the needs much better than Linux to desktop users because they are willing to pay Microsoft to fine tune and make sure it works right on their pc. You do not have to worry an update will hose your system due to the lack of an ABI or some weird wifi will randomly disconnect (issue with my laptop with linux).
What is so evil about getting paid? If you need shit done you provide value to barter that we call call cash in exchange for their labor. That is capitalism 101 and is the most efficient system.
All this non free software is worth every penny for those who need JIT inventory in Access/SQL Server to the accountant who purchases statistical add on packages for Excel so his employer can pay him. If you do not like it go get a job or write your own solution.
Also someone should get paid handsomely for his or her contribution and there is nothing wrong with that.
To keep supporting newer hardware you end up making something thats not XP anymore.
This is why IE 9 can not be backported to XP. It is not because MS wants you to use Vista or Win 7, but rather the security sandboxing is Vista+ only. h.264 requires DRM in the driver and GDI in XP can't do it, etc.
Now you have SSDs coming out and the paging algorithm in XP will kill it fast! It is not as simple as adding TRIM support to the XP kernel. If you add all of these things to support newer browser security and hardware you end up with Vista/win 7 lite.
Why not just use Windows 7 then? Technology is changing and just like the other post today about DPI greater than 100, the problem is XP! We have terrible screen resolutions today and can't upgrade because these users wont change or leave XP and applications will look funy and stretched otherwise because VB 6 apps and others expect 1990s hardware and DPIs etc. The programs look like crap if you use a monitor and resolution other than 100 DPI.
Just upgrade and stop making excuses for the beancounters. Windows 7 offers more than eye candy as I mentioned above are just 2 out of many things a more modern infrastructure can do and you do not have to wait 10 minutes before you computer is usable anymore in the mornings booting up, or the other issues XP has.
Here is something I cut and pasted from a post earlier this week because the benefits over XP are HUGE:
"Off the top of my head Windows 7 offers
Security wise
- Offers better process and privileged seperation with much more secure services to prevent exploits
- UAC
- Secure boot for 64 bit version to prevent rootkits
- Signed drivers in 64 bit to prevent malware and rootkits
- Full DEP for all services and not just some
- ASLR random memory addressing to prevent a peak and poke exploit to execute malware
- Improved sandboxing using ASLR for Internet explorer
- VS 2010 has secure exception handling to prevent buffer overflows and data execution and it comes with IE 9
Performance
- MUCH improved SMP and scalability support for Phenom IIs, Icore5s and Icore 7s.
- No more n^o paging for swap HELL even if the system has lots of free ram (correct me as I forgot the NT algorithm for paging that was replaced)
- SATA/PATA command queing async support rather than single sync
- GPU support for business graphics in aero. THis is usefull is you do things like desktop publishing or multi media heavy powerpoint slides
- H.264 support with full hardware acceleration
- USB 3 support
- Thunderbolt support
- Sleep mode instead of hibernation
- UEFI secure boot (I know this one is political) But nice if you want to be rootkit free
Usability ..."Excel 2010 pops up" and hit enter key!. Shoot what was our sales in assets in 2009? Type WIndows key and "Sales assets 2009" and viola excel and word files show up with those key phrases. When I was in college I had hundres of excel and word documents and switched back to slow Vista just for this feature. Fucking cool to reference things. This day I panic when I go back to XP. I am so used to typing Windows key cmd in 1/5 of a second to open a command prompt etc. You will hate XP after trying this
- Aero peak lets you use the cursor to scroll over minimized programs and IE tabs and it will show a small preview. I use this everyday with lots of things running
- Aero has a side by side feature where you can drag things left or right so you can have one document next to another. I think its called Aero snap
- Awesome search feature making start menu obsolete. Just click the Windows key and type ex
- clear aero means you can see Windows behind Windows
- Saved searches
- Version of IE that doesn't suck and has hardware accelerated graphics and Firefox 3.6 support of HTML 5, ajax, and css 3. Not too bad and is secure. For offices this is great as these poor saps stuck with IE can at least have a modern web experience of this decade.
- Websites can be added to the taskbar as apps. Nice for that salesforce app for work
- Jumplist for minimized items. For example I can right click on the CHrome app on the taskbar and select a frequently visited website.
Reliability
- Trim support. SSDs only last for a year if you are luck. WIthout Trim the life of a SSD in XP is weeks or months if you have lots of space if you are really lucky.
- User mode driver isolation. If a driver fails it wont bluescreen but instead a wizard will pop up and a trouble shooter. The XP ones just had screenshots but the Win 7 will diagnose and even fix a problem
- Restore and shadow volumes. THe restore on XP does not really restore other than try to put some files back and forth. Win 7 restore will restore the registry as well and use metadata to recover even deleted items! Very cool indeed
Windows 8 improves (ignoring METRO) in addition to inheriented Windows 7 features
- Windows ToGo so you can boot with a flash drive to fix a system. About damn time as Linux had this since 2005
- Moving profile on a flash drive (forgot term). You can have your whole desktop, metro apps, and even your files and settings moved between work and home.
- Remote management and app support without AD or VPN. If you sign on with your tablet or desktop with your corporate email you can have your profile and even
If you look at IT as an investment rather than a cost center you will see it is poor business sense to use decade old hardware and operating systems. For example having employees sit and do nothing for 20 minutes every morning while their machines boot and do a security scan, then for 2 hours their computers are unresponsive as McCrappy does a virus scan each Wednesday costs millions in lost productivity.
XP is not rock solid nor a savoir and neither is IE 6.
The issue I have with VB 6 development is you throw away all those man hours down the toilet when its time to get something new. This leaves the PHBs clamoring for VB 6 still but then you need to update it and you are throwing money down the drain for an obsolete platform long term.
How about these reasons (Cut and pasted from another post I made) because the list is so large ...
Off the top of my head Windows 7 offers
Security wise
- Offers better process and privileged seperation with much more secure services to prevent exploits
- UAC
- Secure boot for 64 bit version to prevent rootkits
- Signed drivers in 64 bit to prevent malware and rootkits
- Full DEP for all services and not just some
- ASLR random memory addressing to prevent a peak and poke exploit to execute malware
- Improved sandboxing using ASLR for Internet explorer
- VS 2010 has secure exception handling to prevent buffer overflows and data execution and it comes with IE 9
Performance
- MUCH improved SMP and scalability support for Phenom IIs, Icore5s and Icore 7s.
- No more n^o paging for swap HELL even if the system has lots of free ram (correct me as I forgot the NT algorithm for paging that was replaced)
- SATA/PATA command queing async support rather than single sync
- GPU support for business graphics in aero. THis is usefull is you do things like desktop publishing or multi media heavy powerpoint slides
- H.264 support with full hardware acceleration
- USB 3 support
- Thunderbolt support
- Sleep mode instead of hibernation
- UEFI secure boot (I know this one is political) But nice if you want to be rootkit free
Usability ..."Excel 2010 pops up" and hit enter key!. Shoot what was our sales in assets in 2009? Type WIndows key and "Sales assets 2009" and viola excel and word files show up with those key phrases. When I was in college I had hundres of excel and word documents and switched back to slow Vista just for this feature. Fucking cool to reference things. This day I panic when I go back to XP. I am so used to typing Windows key cmd in 1/5 of a second to open a command prompt etc. You will hate XP after trying this
- Aero peak lets you use the cursor to scroll over minimized programs and IE tabs and it will show a small preview. I use this everyday with lots of things running
- Aero has a side by side feature where you can drag things left or right so you can have one document next to another. I think its called Aero snap
- Awesome search feature making start menu obsolete. Just click the Windows key and type ex
- clear aero means you can see Windows behind Windows
- Saved searches
- Version of IE that doesn't suck and has hardware accelerated graphics and Firefox 3.6 support of HTML 5, ajax, and css 3. Not too bad and is secure. For offices this is great as these poor saps stuck with IE can at least have a modern web experience of this decade.
- Websites can be added to the taskbar as apps. Nice for that salesforce app for work
- Jumplist for minimized items. For example I can right click on the CHrome app on the taskbar and select a frequently visited website.
Reliability
- Trim support. SSDs only last for a year if you are luck. WIthout Trim the life of a SSD in XP is weeks or months if you have lots of space if you are really lucky.
- User mode driver isolation. If a driver fails it wont bluescreen but instead a wizard will pop up and a trouble shooter. The XP ones just had screenshots but the Win 7 will diagnose and even fix a problem
- Restore and shadow volumes. THe restore on XP does not really restore other than try to put some files back and forth. Win 7 restore will restore the registry as well and use metadata to recover even deleted items! Very cool indeed
Windows 8 improves (ignoring METRO) in addition to inheriented Windows 7 features
- Windows ToGo so you can boot with a flash drive to fix a system. About damn time as Linux had this since 2005
- Moving profile on a flash drive (forgot term). You can have your whole desktop, metro apps, and even your files and settings moved between work and home.
- Remote management and app support without AD or VPN. If you sign on with your tablet or desktop wi
Microsoft needs to focus on raising its shareprice right now. If Gates & Balmer didn't own a majority stake, Balmer would be canned already.
The stock price has not moved in a decade and investors are getting impatient. They need to save cash, cut expenses, and invest wisely in what will bring back more capital and liquid assets. An expensive several billion buyout will lower the value of the company and hurts its shareprice more.
I do not see the value?
Worse, the other handset makers like HTC will shit their pants that they are supporting a competitor now and will cut Windows Phone sales and focus solely on Andriod. Ala OS/2 syndrome. All OEMs prefered OS/2 over Windows/DOS but they would be supporting IBM and a competitor if they did so they touted the NT and Windows 9x platform instead.
I have to ask? How many tabs do you have open? The most I have ever seen a browser use is maybe 2.5 gigs with 30+ tabs.
At 30+ tabs it is unmanageable as you spend more time tab cycling trying to figure out which one is where etc. WHen you start Office you do not open all +100 files at once do you? That would be insane and this is why the browser is going crazy trying to run 100 web applets at the same time in your browser. FF 12 is the lightest browser I have seen so far and I think it is counter intuitive to open 200 tabs which I assume you are doing to get that 4 gig limit.
The 4 gig limit is because the browser is only 32 bit. Go IE 9 64 bit if you do not mind the shitty javascript interpreter in that version if you want all the tabs in glory.
The idea is to replace it before it dies as you may not get all your data and programs transferred. It really is not that much of a hassle and the situation is only going to get worse as more AJAX uses bloated api's and HTML 5 will cache all the hundreds of megs of images and video per tab. Flash at least downloads it and does not keep all of it in ram at once.
Your machine, but I have not touched a system with that much ram in probably 6 or 7 years at least. I service computers for a living too and I at least see 768 megs. Actually take it back I did use one machine back in 2010 with 512 and that was only to be used as a wifi router on an old recycled machine. Your box is a clunker similar to that Honda you see down the street that is 10 years old that the neighbor just wont throw away yet and is always fixing something breaking on it.
I had a similiar conversation with him to upgrade a few months ago. Now is an excellent time to upgrade before Windows 8 is out if you dual boot. XP is on the way out and its easy to migrate with the easy transfer wizard and there is an XP mode if you upgrade to the pro version.
The web is a platform that constantly upgrades just like an OS. No one is feeding the same IE 6 code that used 40 megs of ram when he bought hos computer 10 years ago. JQuery and jit optimization and high rez graphics take hundreds of megs per tab. As html 5 comes the problem becomes much worse as everything is cached unlike Flash.
You can get a great workstation for $600.
Dude the more you spam for it the higher the Google page ranking it gets. Out of curiosity I did a google search for malware and cleanPC was 4 out of the 5 links listed. Good god talk about SEO to the extreme
It is so big it is possible any VM with network access could have received the command to self destruct or maybe it self destructs when it can't find a LAN connection? I would not be surprised.
If this is a real professional job I would not be surprised if it leaves some backdoors opened for another different piece of malware. It wouldn't surprise me if Cisco router rootkits exist. After all evidence points in China they are doing just this, as they did with Nortel routers with a backdoor.
The more I learn about Flame the more it amazes me.
Arstechnica.com has more stories on it and how it worked through collision detection and much more. I am amazed yet worried as I am sure malware mobfia folks are using the source code with real NATO grade malware complete with forging certificates, turning zombies into proxy servers, and using the Md5 collision detection done by professional mathematicians.
Worse Ubuntu and other operating systems can be hit by this as they use the same algorithms for the certificates. This piece of malware was just done through conventional 0 day exploits but rather a very sophisticated means of forging certificates and might have done the cyberworld much more harm.
Those are not retail because they can't be geeksquaded. The ones online are different as I looked for that very mouse and they can't carry it.
Yep like Nokia blamed the sales people for why people are not storming into their stores for the WIndows Phone right?
It is never the CEO's or managements fault. I apologize if my posts sound militant but I am tired of working for people like this and seeing those who are paid minimum wage, told to be on call 24 x7 in case someone calls in and can't work another job, and be treated like garbage by people who never worked in retail before now have to worry about job security.
Job insecurity is the worse anxiety I have ever felt. It should be normal if you are incompetent. However, the whole workforce should not feel for it and sacrifice because the economy is shitty and the person making the rules is secure or gets a golden parachute.
Bad management is abound and the frustrating thing is the last CEO worked his way up. Statistically they make the best CEOs out there as they know what it is like to be in front of the customer or in the operations. However, his failure was that he was in sales mode like he was an associate 20+ years ago. That is the trees and not the forest which is seeing customer demand, having a vision, anticipating markets etc. Just SELL SELL SELL.
I can tell you from both experience and this story that the drivers still suck. Maybe just not as much. Nvidia drivers are always much better but the hardware has issues and fails in my experience.
I prefer to fiddle with drivers more until I find the right version and then keep it there. AMD needs to be scalded rather than defended by its users trying to justify their egos.
I plan to scald them as I find no ASLR and Dep unacceptable. I might as well still use XP then.
I am referring to the drivers when I say upgrade. My drivers have to be at 12.3 or the other bugs will pop out with the driver forgetting I have a monitor and not a TV nor aero being disabled after sleeping. It is a driver issue and not a bios thing.
ATI mentioned they are stopping the monthly driver update as so many complaints are out there, on MaximumPC.com.
ASLR is just for the ram on the board and not the video card. We do not have malware on the video card yet ... hopefully. It is a big deal if ASLR is disabled on my desktop even if you have a sand boxed browser as malware writers always try to find ways to break out of it and do so every month with new vulnerabilities that need to be repatched. If I owned my own shop and serviced small to medium sized businesses I would even go out of my way to avoid ATI/AMD products or keep them on XP as there is no benefit of changing as ASLR, DEP, and other security is the main selling point to lower TCO.
As an ATI user I will take the commenter's advice and tell ATI to fix their damn driver and backport the Windows 8 one to Windows 7 that is secure. Even if it does slow down performance you have to remember consoles have ASLR ram in their DRM schemes. Too many bad guys out there
I would think that computer program would help as it seems BB sells things for more margin and not want customers want. Or is it like 3 stereos that are value brand and that is it?
I forgot 5 years ago they used to carry 30 of them and did not call them geeksquad. One BB in Alaska is selling lazy boy chairs too. Maybe they are in desperation and each store tries something to see if it sticks and then replicated it nationwide?
I do agree with the appliances. Too many are eating retail space and music is something they need to cut down on as people buy it online or pirate it.
Yep, and I will go elsewhere for my business. Then the MBAs and CEOs can all be dumbfounded on why sales are down and customer surveys say they prefer competitors instead.
They are a retailer and not a bank so if they want to devalue their retail operations go right ahead. idiots
If I am a customer I do not care.
Give me what I want and let me leave in peace or I will take my business elsewhere. Customers are stupid but so are the greedy retailers who saddle Hispanic customers with no English into these deals. Then they are so far in debt they can't afford to become repeat customers. That is penny wise but dollar dumb business where management focuses on the individual sale and losses track of the long term goal.
Not everyone can afford that mac as an example as only the top 25% in this economy who are not straddled with student loans for tens of thousands of dollars and have their house paid off already can do. Most people live paycheck to paycheck and if they need a computer are vulnerable to scammers. If they feel BB is the scammer it will leave a sour taste. I for one can't afford your mac and pay it off in one month. However, I am not stupid and know better than to buy one
the Apple store
I stopped reading there.
Why? THe Apple Store is how to do it if you sell expensive items. Walmart is how you do it for low margin items. The Apple Store pays its employees well, wont push you, gives you an excellent experience for the price.
Have you seen BB prices?
They are not a loss leader, but rather the opposite. They overcharge and buy the bottom of the barrel out of date things for a high price, then try to nail the customer with geeksquad, then high interest credit cards, then have only one checkout so you are stuck behind a wall of overpriced candy and other items you are likely to buy while you wait and having 1 cashier saves money too.
They are greedy. However supply and demand dictates you either have a low margin and high volume ala Walmart, or you have high margin, low volume like a car dealership. BB is trying to have it both ways by being high volume and high priced for low quality items and are shocked it is not working out! This is why they push GeekSquad to make up for the loss. The last 2 CEOs bombed the company as they were former sales people who can not see the trees from the forest with an emphasis on sell sell sell only and not why and what does the customer want?
Mine stopped carrying them this year. They did have a razer keyboard which had the worst ratings and they stopped carrying the cheaper Logitech ones which are better all because you are statistically less likely to buy a protection plan with it. Not because of demand as low cost items always have the highest demand. BB thinks it is the only retailer so they can warp the supply and demand curves to their liking and management can get this bonus etc.
They are greedy idiots. The customer is part of the equation too which is why they are looking at alternatives. BB assumes its online stores so they now bundle malware BB media store on all laptops and pcs it sells.