Already available in XP via MS and Google's current products.
"the side-bar with gadgets offer handy functionality,"
Already available in XP from several vendors.
"new and improved applications"
Nothing magical here and free applications like Picasa etc are available for XP.
"networking is substantially improved"
Probably true, but don't be surprised at the big bugs which come out due to a MS 1.0 product.
"easy of use has been polished"
Current XP users will struggle to adapt to many pointless changes. MS shuffled around and hid gui elements and menus which will make things confusing for XP users who are used to certain conventions being the same for the last decade. The new f*cked up display properties configuration settings are a perfect example of this. New users and uses who only click on one icon will probably fair better and of course we will all adapt to the new "standard". I personally don't consider the new gui an upgrade.
"security has been strongly increased"
True, in many ways that is true. Two glaring problems are for the Alpha TCP/IP stack and the fact that users will continue to click "Yes/Continue" to everything regardless of how much you isolate the actual dialog box prompt. Certain things like encryption may end up being very helpful, I guess we'll know for sure in 6 months if MS did its homework or not.
Overall I think Vista offer some nice technologies under the hood that in a few years may really pay off. But for now it is a solution in search of a problem. Vista's biggest enemy is XP which runs faster, needs less resources, and can easily be properly secured. I guess MS should continue to thank God for vendor lock-in and desktop monopolies because as of Jan 30, 2007 none of this "is Vista worth it or not?" is going to matter.
I lost many many hours to that game. The trick early on was to find "Murphy's Ghost" and send in a character to fight him over and over to get craploads of exp. That and the tiltowait spell, always was exciting to cast that. What a great game. I still have the original manual and disk sitting along with my IBM PCjr.
Where the hell is the $19.95/month 1000 minutes everything included in a month to month contract plan? Why are we paying $39-$59 a month and being locked in 2 years at a time for plans in this day and age? When I started using cell phones 15 years ago I was positive that by now Cell phones would be like $9.95 a month by now. How naive I was.
Whatever pre-paid you use just make sure and steer clear of Verizon pre-paid. Every pitfall for pre-paid contracts can be found with their plans.
I've been using RTM since it came out via MSDN and I just don't see the need to upgrade from XP to Vista except for a few limited cases.
Overall:
Pluses - Bitlocker might be a great solution to keep stolen laptops from causing so much damage. Built in apps for managing photos and your calendar are nice to have. Built in Search works well. Backup and Restore are nice if you can afford the "right" version of Vista. Windows Meeting space is neat. Windows Update now just a small app that runs locally. Firewall does both ways and is much improved.
Cons - If you own a CRT Vista may not be for you. Fonts are designed specifically for LCD only use. Yuck! Aero adds literally nothing to the user experience, waste of cpu and gpu cycles. Slower gaming than XP until DX10 cards and games become common a while from now. They changed the file system layout for no reason, ie no more "My Documents". High system requirements with little payoff. You need 64bit to truly take adavantage of the new security measures. New unproven network stack may be a huge mistake. UAC , Everyone is just going to click "Allow" anyway so why bother? Current Free 3rd party and MS apps for XP duplicate what Vista is offering. With Picasa, Google Desktop Search, WMP11, Windows Defender, etc all available why do we need Vista?
Overall this is not a necessary upgrade for the vast majority of XP users. A few years from now when developers really start taking advantage of the "under the hood stuff" you may have something. But until then home users should avoid upgrading unless there is a specific feature you feel to be must-have. I usually upgrade to every MS release when it comes out(well except for ME) but I find having to force myself to even boot into Vista.
If I a nickel for every OSS groupware project that was supposed to be "the" Exchange replacement but then simply died off I'd be a rich man. How disappointing.
"On the other hand, only an SLR will give you the flexibility to express your artistic side."
I really disagree with this statement. Unless your some sort of DOF freak I dont' see how that statement is true.
Digicams are getting faster and faster and the current gen has usable ISO 400 and getting usable ISO 800 and above. Startup times and shutter speeds are also improving. Don't be surprised when in 5 years pocket digicams can do 90% of what a current gen DSLR can do all in a tiny form factor.
IMHO the average photographer is much better off with something he/she can easily carry with them at all times like the wonderful Canon SD700 IS as opposed to something they need to "break out" in order to use. DSLR's continue to be better technically and will be for a while but their advantages are narrowing every single year and I don't see a super bright future for them once "pocket cams" reach a certain level of performance.
Look, the people at Novell are not stupid. They knew perfectly well on some level that this is exactly how it would be interpreted by the OSS community. Call if FUD or whatever you want, something smells really bad here and they should have known better.
The super-grandparent or whatever was right. Time to shun Novell if this is what they consider playing fair against other OSS distributors. Cozy up with MS as the official "MS blessed" version of linux(screw all the others) and watch as the community you based your software on abandons you.
What you should be doing is complaining that MS tried to pull this bullshit in the first place. Thanking them for retracting an unfair and onerous provision is the LAST thing you should be doing.
You should be saying "That's right assholes fix your EULA, if you ever try to pull crap like that again I'll migrate my entire office to Linux". Applaud them? Right.
We'll see if it's A) a real verifiable encryption standard being used and B) if they keep a back door open. The article hints that there is no "master" password and that if you lose your password your toast. If that's true then great, if not then this technology isn't worth a dam.
If on the positive side this does work as advertised then boy is there going to be a lot of teeth gnashing in the Fatherland.
Or are they intent on making sure the first thing every Vista user does is grab a 3rd party tool for managing their photos instead of using Vista's built in tools?
I know Vista is offering a lot "under the hood" but beyond that every time I look at it I honestly think "They've had 5 years to development a new OS and this is all we get?". Vista may end up being a solid OS, and I'll definitely be using it at home, but I'm just not wowed by it in any way. I really did expect more.
"In small business, there is (noramlly) no need for high security beacuse you can't Really Fuck Things Up (TM) like you can in big business where there are billions at stake."
That makes zero sense. All things are relative and you can certainly "really fuck things up" for a small company that only does a few hundred thousand dollars a year in business. A billion dollar business can a least survive hackers and lawsuits for the most part. If a small business say loses its one main customers because of some security breach say goodbye to the entire business. They may make a smaller target but the end result can be just as devastating when a small business does not implement decent security practices.
No problems here. And I've heard pretty much good things from everyone I know who has upgraded. So while I'm sure you have have a legit problem your single instance does not in any way prove that there is something wrong with the quality of this release.
First, why did you remove the ability for users to move buttons where they saw fit? What great threat do you see in allowing me to have my home and print buttons next to my back and forward buttons? Second, roughly what percentage of your user base will actually end up using any of IE's new features beyond those who by default will passively benefit from the print engine which finally no longer cuts off pages? Do you think it will fall along age lines? I can see a year from now the vast majority of IE users still not knowing about or using tab browsing.
Photo Gallery needs sharpen! Somewhere there is a funny picture of how inconsistent the interface still can be with button and arrows moving around per application, Wish I could find that link again. Are the minimize, maximize, and close buttons still all screwed up in RC2? http://adacosta.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E8E5CC039 D51E3DB!6931.entry
Do translucent windows add anything to the use experience? User: "Oh look, at the top of my window through a.25" space I can see part of the text of an icon on my desktop! How very useful!"
But I will say it's coming bugs and all so you all might as well get used to it. Just think of how much money you'll make installing and fixing Vista? Just think of how little I'll be paying for Vista thanks to having MSDN via work...Big kisses to MS now!
If you try to install something like Shockwave you get an error. Now I don't use IE much at all but if your in a situation where you have to use it and have to login as Admin this is a decent solution.
How about "Passenger is wearing a t-shirt is another language so he must be threat."?
It's certainly an effective means of distinguishing potential terrorists. If you don't look, act, and think just like you MUST be a terrorist or terrorist supporter. I never thought I'd see the day when my president said that.
Didn't these losers in the 35-54 group learn their lesson back in the day with Geocities? Nobody wants to visit your poorly designed. Please at least tell me that Myspace doesn't allow the blink tag?
I disagree. Now you still have to find a 3rd source to agree with you and 3 sources to discredit me. And of course I just got off work so I have all day long to disagree with those who disagree with me in the first place. Better put on a cup of coffee.:-)
"Ubuntu is a great answer to a tough problem, how to make Linux useful for complete newbies)."
I'm sorry but I disagree with you on a fundamental level about *nix and learning. IMHO slackware and the rest of the *nixs are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful. Somewhere from many years ago there is a post by me here about ease of use and OS's. Basically what I had said is that the ultimate goal of any OS should be to be usable by anyone for anything. In a perfect world the learning curve for and OS is nil and it simply gets out of the way. You should be concentrating on the fact that OS's like Slackaware are broken and not done yet vs the fact that they serve as a learning tool for other "broken" OS's like the one's you mention. I hate to sound like GWB here but if you disagree with me your simply wrong. Your way is masochism and my way is the future of OS design.
"I'm still waiting for any mention of whether the Zune only lets you trade music purchased from..."
You know I don't actually know that much about the Zune beyond the very basics. One thing I do know is MS isn't doing itself any favors by keeping everyone in the dark on its wireless capabilities. Right now based on their silence things are not looking good at all. Let's hope everything else about the Zune measures up so that Apple actually gets some competition in the market.
Re:Still Mechanical Conversion to Energy
on
Two Tiny Gas Turbines
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"Where's these fuel cells I keep hearing about?"
Why "A commercial version is 3 to 5 years away" of course...
Slashdot Mirror
"the search capabilities are vastly improved"
Already available in XP via MS and Google's current products.
"the side-bar with gadgets offer handy functionality,"
Already available in XP from several vendors.
"new and improved applications"
Nothing magical here and free applications like Picasa etc are available for XP.
"networking is substantially improved"
Probably true, but don't be surprised at the big bugs which come out due to a MS 1.0 product.
"easy of use has been polished"
Current XP users will struggle to adapt to many pointless changes. MS shuffled around and hid gui elements and menus which will make things confusing for XP users who are used to certain conventions being the same for the last decade. The new f*cked up display properties configuration settings are a perfect example of this.
New users and uses who only click on one icon will probably fair better and of course we will all adapt to the new "standard". I personally don't consider the new gui an upgrade.
"security has been strongly increased"
True, in many ways that is true. Two glaring problems are for the Alpha TCP/IP stack and the fact that users will continue to click "Yes/Continue" to everything regardless of how much you isolate the actual dialog box prompt. Certain things like encryption may end up being very helpful, I guess we'll know for sure in 6 months if MS did its homework or not.
Overall I think Vista offer some nice technologies under the hood that in a few years may really pay off. But for now it is a solution in search of a problem. Vista's biggest enemy is XP which runs faster, needs less resources, and can easily be properly secured. I guess MS should continue to thank God for vendor lock-in and desktop monopolies because as of Jan 30, 2007 none of this "is Vista worth it or not?" is going to matter.
Huh, how did I possibly not know that he used to be a /. user? He must think us Wizardry fans are a bunch of nuts. ;-)
I lost many many hours to that game. The trick early on was to find "Murphy's Ghost" and send in a character to fight him over and over to get craploads of exp. That and the tiltowait spell, always was exciting to cast that. What a great game. I still have the original manual and disk sitting along with my IBM PCjr.
Where the hell is the $19.95/month 1000 minutes everything included in a month to month contract plan? Why are we paying $39-$59 a month and being locked in 2 years at a time for plans in this day and age? When I started using cell phones 15 years ago I was positive that by now Cell phones would be like $9.95 a month by now. How naive I was.
Whatever pre-paid you use just make sure and steer clear of Verizon pre-paid. Every pitfall for pre-paid contracts can be found with their plans.
I've been using RTM since it came out via MSDN and I just don't see the need to upgrade from XP to Vista except for a few limited cases.
Overall:
Pluses -
Bitlocker might be a great solution to keep stolen laptops from causing so much damage.
Built in apps for managing photos and your calendar are nice to have.
Built in Search works well.
Backup and Restore are nice if you can afford the "right" version of Vista.
Windows Meeting space is neat.
Windows Update now just a small app that runs locally.
Firewall does both ways and is much improved.
Cons -
If you own a CRT Vista may not be for you. Fonts are designed specifically for LCD only use. Yuck!
Aero adds literally nothing to the user experience, waste of cpu and gpu cycles.
Slower gaming than XP until DX10 cards and games become common a while from now.
They changed the file system layout for no reason, ie no more "My Documents".
High system requirements with little payoff.
You need 64bit to truly take adavantage of the new security measures.
New unproven network stack may be a huge mistake.
UAC , Everyone is just going to click "Allow" anyway so why bother?
Current Free 3rd party and MS apps for XP duplicate what Vista is offering. With Picasa, Google Desktop Search, WMP11, Windows Defender, etc all available why do we need Vista?
Overall this is not a necessary upgrade for the vast majority of XP users. A few years from now when developers really start taking advantage of the "under the hood stuff" you may have something. But until then home users should avoid upgrading unless there is a specific feature you feel to be must-have. I usually upgrade to every MS release when it comes out(well except for ME) but I find having to force myself to even boot into Vista.
If I a nickel for every OSS groupware project that was supposed to be "the" Exchange replacement but then simply died off I'd be a rich man. How disappointing.
"I dont have super monkey balls "
Baaawhahahawww
Sorry.
"On the other hand, only an SLR will give you the flexibility to express your artistic side."
I really disagree with this statement. Unless your some sort of DOF freak I dont' see how that statement is true.
Digicams are getting faster and faster and the current gen has usable ISO 400 and getting usable ISO 800 and above. Startup times and shutter speeds are also improving. Don't be surprised when in 5 years pocket digicams can do 90% of what a current gen DSLR can do all in a tiny form factor.
IMHO the average photographer is much better off with something he/she can easily carry with them at all times like the wonderful Canon SD700 IS as opposed to something they need to "break out" in order to use. DSLR's continue to be better technically and will be for a while but their advantages are narrowing every single year and I don't see a super bright future for them once "pocket cams" reach a certain level of performance.
Look, the people at Novell are not stupid. They knew perfectly well on some level that this is exactly how it would be interpreted by the OSS community. Call if FUD or whatever you want, something smells really bad here and they should have known better.
The super-grandparent or whatever was right. Time to shun Novell if this is what they consider playing fair against other OSS distributors. Cozy up with MS as the official "MS blessed" version of linux(screw all the others) and watch as the community you based your software on abandons you.
"So, I applaude you MS for doing the right thing"
What you should be doing is complaining that MS tried to pull this bullshit in the first place. Thanking them for retracting an unfair and onerous provision is the LAST thing you should be doing.
You should be saying "That's right assholes fix your EULA, if you ever try to pull crap like that again I'll migrate my entire office to Linux". Applaud them? Right.
We'll see if it's A) a real verifiable encryption standard being used and B) if they keep a back door open. The article hints that there is no "master" password and that if you lose your password your toast. If that's true then great, if not then this technology isn't worth a dam.
If on the positive side this does work as advertised then boy is there going to be a lot of teeth gnashing in the Fatherland.
http://www.mstechtoday.com/2006/10/17/importing-ph otos-from-camera-into-vista-sucks/
Or are they intent on making sure the first thing every Vista user does is grab a 3rd party tool for managing their photos instead of using Vista's built in tools?
I know Vista is offering a lot "under the hood" but beyond that every time I look at it I honestly think "They've had 5 years to development a new OS and this is all we get?". Vista may end up being a solid OS, and I'll definitely be using it at home, but I'm just not wowed by it in any way. I really did expect more.
http://www.ryanvm.net/msfn/
This is what I've used with good results.
"In small business, there is (noramlly) no need for high security beacuse you can't Really Fuck Things Up (TM) like you can in big business where there are billions at stake."
That makes zero sense. All things are relative and you can certainly "really fuck things up" for a small company that only does a few hundred thousand dollars a year in business. A billion dollar business can a least survive hackers and lawsuits for the most part. If a small business say loses its one main customers because of some security breach say goodbye to the entire business. They may make a smaller target but the end result can be just as devastating when a small business does not implement decent security practices.
No problems here. And I've heard pretty much good things from everyone I know who has upgraded. So while I'm sure you have have a legit problem your single instance does not in any way prove that there is something wrong with the quality of this release.
First, why did you remove the ability for users to move buttons where they saw fit? What great threat do you see in allowing me to have my home and print buttons next to my back and forward buttons? Second, roughly what percentage of your user base will actually end up using any of IE's new features beyond those who by default will passively benefit from the print engine which finally no longer cuts off pages? Do you think it will fall along age lines? I can see a year from now the vast majority of IE users still not knowing about or using tab browsing.
I know quite funny coming from an article hosted on MSDN. At least the guy was giving help for a real life scenario.
Photo Gallery needs sharpen! Somewhere there is a funny picture of how inconsistent the interface still can be with button and arrows moving around per application, Wish I could find that link again. Are the minimize, maximize, and close buttons still all screwed up in RC2? http://adacosta.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!E8E5CC039 D51E3DB!6931.entry
.25" space I can see part of the text of an icon on my desktop! How very useful!"
Do translucent windows add anything to the use experience?
User: "Oh look, at the top of my window through a
But I will say it's coming bugs and all so you all might as well get used to it. Just think of how much money you'll make installing and fixing Vista? Just think of how little I'll be paying for Vista thanks to having MSDN via work...Big kisses to MS now!
Article here http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/securecode/colu mns/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dncode/html/s ecure11152004.asp
/c
So for example this is my shortcut to IE
C:\DropMyRights\DropMyRights.exe "c:\program files\internet explorer\iexplore.exe"
If you try to install something like Shockwave you get an error. Now I don't use IE much at all but if your in a situation where you have to use it and have to login as Admin this is a decent solution.
How about "Passenger is wearing a t-shirt is another language so he must be threat."?
It's certainly an effective means of distinguishing potential terrorists. If you don't look, act, and think just like you MUST be a terrorist or terrorist supporter. I never thought I'd see the day when my president said that.
Didn't these losers in the 35-54 group learn their lesson back in the day with Geocities? Nobody wants to visit your poorly designed. Please at least tell me that Myspace doesn't allow the blink tag?
I disagree. Now you still have to find a 3rd source to agree with you and 3 sources to discredit me. And of course I just got off work so I have all day long to disagree with those who disagree with me in the first place. Better put on a cup of coffee. :-)
"Ubuntu is a great answer to a tough problem, how to make Linux useful for complete newbies)."
I'm sorry but I disagree with you on a fundamental level about *nix and learning. IMHO slackware and the rest of the *nixs are broken at the very core in that they require learning to be useful. Somewhere from many years ago there is a post by me here about ease of use and OS's. Basically what I had said is that the ultimate goal of any OS should be to be usable by anyone for anything. In a perfect world the learning curve for and OS is nil and it simply gets out of the way. You should be concentrating on the fact that OS's like Slackaware are broken and not done yet vs the fact that they serve as a learning tool for other "broken" OS's like the one's you mention. I hate to sound like GWB here but if you disagree with me your simply wrong. Your way is masochism and my way is the future of OS design.
"I'm still waiting for any mention of whether the Zune only lets you trade music purchased from..."
You know I don't actually know that much about the Zune beyond the very basics. One thing I do know is MS isn't doing itself any favors by keeping everyone in the dark on its wireless capabilities. Right now based on their silence things are not looking good at all. Let's hope everything else about the Zune measures up so that Apple actually gets some competition in the market.
"Where's these fuel cells I keep hearing about?"
Why "A commercial version is 3 to 5 years away" of course...