I can't help but wonder if Curry's and Dixons' customer support is equally poor.
It's truly appalling! These companies are so bad that they shouldn't be in business.
There should be an organised boycott of this group of companies. This will not significantly inconvenience consumers - they can buy their computer equipment more cheaply online and get after-sales service.
Don't do any business with PC World! They are seriously overpriced in all departments, and provide no useful after-sales service whatsoever. The sooner they're out of business, the better!
You're right - this time. However, PC World (like Microsoft) will probably survive because they predominantly sell to slack-jawed morons. These are the same morons who believe Bill Gates "invented the internet" and that there's no alternative to Windows.
No geek-led anti-PC World campaign is going to have much effect. We need a consumer-led campaign against their abysmal business practice. This should also be taken up by Trading Standards, but this is unlikely to happen.
MickDownUnder: Vista's implementation is fine, it's the antiquated software Lundis admin are grimly determined to hang on to that's the problem.
No. You entirely misunderstand - probably for "political" reasons. MS arbitrarily decided to implement an ancient protocol that was discontinued in the early 90s by Microsoft for "security reasons" in their latest "operating system".
Intelligent ISPs won't accept ancient DHCP broadcast demands - partially because they were told by Microsoft fifteen years ago that it was a security threat! Once again, MS shoot themselves in the foot. My ISP (the biggest in Europe) is also going to stop Vista users this way, and have plans to discourage all Windows users from connecting to the 'net. This will eliminate a huge amount of spam and malware!
Russinovitch is a rank amateur. He's marginally interesting when he's bashing MS - but only because he's wasted the time looking into the flaws in Windows. We real programmers wouldn't go anywhere near Windows. We're too busy writing big applications for commerce and filling our pockets with the money that MS is missing. Our "take" will be bigger than MS' in the next year or two!
MS didn't have any time to do real testing. The horrible truth of Vista is that it was thrown together in a little under 9 months when Ballmer demanded that they had to ship something!.
It's very badly broken in so many ways that it's unusable in an Office environment, too unstable for gamers because of the flaky drivers, too expensive for the average home user, and much too bloated to run on >90% of the PCs out there!
The V2000 system was way ahead of the rest - if they'd added "auto-reverse", it would have been able to record up to 8 hours continuously on one tape, which would have killed off the competition...
You're mostly right - it is just a new skin for XP with added DRM.
Vista was thrown together in about 7 months after marketing decided that they had to "get something out there". All the clever stuff that had been developed over the previous five years was scrapped (WinFS, anyone?), at a gigantic cost to the company. This debacle should be the beginning of the end...
MS can't fix the problems. They now only employ point, click and drool "programmers" who think Visual Basic is a programming language. All the real programmers left years ago, when marketing took over running the show.
Actually Windows often fails to be compatable with Windows. Just ask the poor suckers who've paid for Vista and find that most of their apps and none of their hardware drivers work anymore.
On a recent trip to China, I saw zero Windows machines - plenty of Linux, though. I saw a few Windows machine in Hong Kong - at the airport check-in desks. They'd all crashed!
It is well known that there are classes of executables that can "force" execution on Windows XP and Vista.
Whoops! Maybe it wasn't well-known...
This is why it's "un-American" to run anything other than Windows!
Problem is that it varies radically thoughout the world. On a recent trip to China, the only Windows machines I saw were on an airline check-in desk (and they'd all crashed)! Trips to India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia recently revealed very few Windows machines in use. A survey in those regions would show Windows usage at under 5%!
We can see why you wanted to remain an anonymous troll!
The number of Linux users on the planet is roughly equal to the number of people connected to the internet. You use Linux - though you don't know it, on almost every webpage you visit!
Current Linux distributions are between 5 and 7 years ahead of anything that MS have produced, and make Vista look very old fashioned, slow, unreliable and expensive. Feel free to use Vista, but don't come looking for help when the next revalidation of your crapware declares yours to be an illegal copy, and you have to pay the extortionate price for it all over again!
There are so many idiots in this state of the affairs
This is entirely typical of British IT projects. Blair was bribed (with a house) by Bill Gates so no alternative to MS is ever considered. The people responsible for commissioning IT projects are fired if they even suggest anything other than proprietary, MS-based "solutions" to IT problems.
No British "Government" IT project has ever worked!
At some point you won't be able to buy an off the shelf PC without Vista.
Why do you think the big boys like Dell are now offering Ubuntu pre-loaded machines? It's to give the discerning buyer a choice - between a bloated, slow, insecure, untested, incompatible proprietary mess that's Vista, or an operating system!
Windows: A poor proprietary client for a Unix world!
A friend of mine who's a military history buff told me a story about Soviet fighter aircraft in the 70s and 80s. Seems they had very powerful look-down, shoot-down radars and pilots were instructed to turn them off during take off and landing. Apparently sometimes they forgot, and runway maintenance crews had to regularly pick up the carcasses of rabbits, birds and other unlucky critters that were in the area when those MiGs went on missions.
That's what we engineers would call "complete cobblers". The power intensity required to cook anything is remarkably high, and requires some time - your microwave oven takes some minutes before the "ding". Also, the frequency at which a microwave oven cooks is chosen because it resonates water molecules. The last thing you want is radar that can't "see" through clouds!
Or you could say, just kill the process in Windows.
Often you can't just kill the process in Windows. The "operating system" itself becomes unstable and requires restarting.
The whole point of computers in schools is to familiarise students with them.
Yes. So why not familiarise them with the types of operating systems that will predominate when they leave school? Windows is rapidly becoming irrelevant - especially now that Joe Sixpack can buy a Linux pre-loaded Dell. Outside the USA, Windows is rapidly becoming less prevalent, and is almost unknown in some major markets!
The only legislation that would have any positive effect is to prevent all users of Microsoft "operating systems" and "software" connecting. 90% of spam and other 'net crap is from compromised MS machines.
The entire IP stack of Vista/Longhorn has been reimplemented.
No it hasn't. It's the same old stolen (and later accredited) BSD code that Windows has always used. There's nobody left at Redmond that understands the ancient code, and it remains buried in the twisted, unmaintainable mess that is Vista.
Chinese people are well aware there are better solutions out there than Windows for an operating system. It's only a matter of time before someone in power starts talking about "Red Flag Linux" and how it's openness can help prevent problems exactly like this... then it's all over for Microsoft in that market.
It already is all over for MS in most of the Third World. On a recent trip to the Far East, the only Windows machines I saw were on an airline check-in desk, and they'd all blue-screened! Every computer I saw was running some Unix variant - whether it was Linux, BSD, Solaris or Mac.
Microsoft has no significant presence in what is probably the biggest market in the world.
On similar business trips to Australia and to parts of South America, I have seen progressively less and less MS products. Consumers outside the USA have discovered that there are truly viable alternatives, and are fed up with all the insecurities, instabilities and expense of MS products that basically don't work properly (and can't ever work properly!).
A 40 MW hydro-electric plant would cost less than one-twentieth of the price of this plant, and would have much less environmental impact. This effort is a waste of time and money.
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I can't help but wonder if Curry's and Dixons' customer support is equally poor.
It's truly appalling! These companies are so bad that they shouldn't be in business.
There should be an organised boycott of this group of companies. This will not significantly inconvenience consumers - they can buy their computer equipment more cheaply online and get after-sales service.
Don't do any business with PC World! They are seriously overpriced in all departments, and provide no useful after-sales service whatsoever. The sooner they're out of business, the better!
You're right - this time. However, PC World (like Microsoft) will probably survive because they predominantly sell to slack-jawed morons. These are the same morons who believe Bill Gates "invented the internet" and that there's no alternative to Windows.
No geek-led anti-PC World campaign is going to have much effect. We need a consumer-led campaign against their abysmal business practice. This should also be taken up by Trading Standards, but this is unlikely to happen.
Why the obvious troll?
MickDownUnder: Vista's implementation is fine, it's the antiquated software Lundis admin are grimly determined to hang on to that's the problem.
No. You entirely misunderstand - probably for "political" reasons. MS arbitrarily decided to implement an ancient protocol that was discontinued in the early 90s by Microsoft for "security reasons" in their latest "operating system".
Intelligent ISPs won't accept ancient DHCP broadcast demands - partially because they were told by Microsoft fifteen years ago that it was a security threat! Once again, MS shoot themselves in the foot. My ISP (the biggest in Europe) is also going to stop Vista users this way, and have plans to discourage all Windows users from connecting to the 'net. This will eliminate a huge amount of spam and malware!
Game Over, Microsoft!
Russinovitch is a rank amateur. He's marginally interesting when he's bashing MS - but only because he's wasted the time looking into the flaws in Windows. We real programmers wouldn't go anywhere near Windows. We're too busy writing big applications for commerce and filling our pockets with the money that MS is missing. Our "take" will be bigger than MS' in the next year or two!
MS didn't have any time to do real testing. The horrible truth of Vista is that it was thrown together in a little under 9 months when Ballmer demanded that they had to ship something!.
It's very badly broken in so many ways that it's unusable in an Office environment, too unstable for gamers because of the flaky drivers, too expensive for the average home user, and much too bloated to run on >90% of the PCs out there!
Game Over, Microsoft!
The V2000 system was way ahead of the rest - if they'd added "auto-reverse", it would have been able to record up to 8 hours continuously on one tape, which would have killed off the competition...
You're mostly right - it is just a new skin for XP with added DRM.
Vista was thrown together in about 7 months after marketing decided that they had to "get something out there". All the clever stuff that had been developed over the previous five years was scrapped (WinFS, anyone?), at a gigantic cost to the company. This debacle should be the beginning of the end...
Game Over, Microsoft
MS can't fix the problems. They now only employ point, click and drool "programmers" who think Visual Basic is a programming language. All the real programmers left years ago, when marketing took over running the show.
Game Over, Microsoft!
Actually Windows often fails to be compatable with Windows. Just ask the poor suckers who've paid for Vista and find that most of their apps and none of their hardware drivers work anymore.
Ubuntu is still far behind Microsoft Windows, when it comes to Windows compatibility.
/.
This has got to be one of the most stupid things I've ever seen posted on
The poster simply doesn't get it. Windows is largely irrelevant. It's just a poor proprietary client for a Unix world!
On a recent trip to China, I saw zero Windows machines - plenty of Linux, though. I saw a few Windows machine in Hong Kong - at the airport check-in desks. They'd all crashed!
Don't believe the Windows FUD!
Game Over, Microsoft!
Epidemiology and Meteorology should be labelled "pseudo sciences" - each is about as much use as the Tarot!
It is well known that there are classes of executables that can "force" execution on Windows XP and Vista. Whoops! Maybe it wasn't well-known... This is why it's "un-American" to run anything other than Windows!
Take a sample of 10000 people / companies.
Problem is that it varies radically thoughout the world. On a recent trip to China, the only Windows machines I saw were on an airline check-in desk (and they'd all crashed)! Trips to India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia recently revealed very few Windows machines in use. A survey in those regions would show Windows usage at under 5%!
Game Over, Microsoft!
We can see why you wanted to remain an anonymous troll!
The number of Linux users on the planet is roughly equal to the number of people connected to the internet. You use Linux - though you don't know it, on almost every webpage you visit!
Current Linux distributions are between 5 and 7 years ahead of anything that MS have produced, and make Vista look very old fashioned, slow, unreliable and expensive. Feel free to use Vista, but don't come looking for help when the next revalidation of your crapware declares yours to be an illegal copy, and you have to pay the extortionate price for it all over again!
Game Over, Microsoft
There are so many idiots in this state of the affairs
This is entirely typical of British IT projects. Blair was bribed (with a house) by Bill Gates so no alternative to MS is ever considered. The people responsible for commissioning IT projects are fired if they even suggest anything other than proprietary, MS-based "solutions" to IT problems.
No British "Government" IT project has ever worked!
Windows Vista: the end of Microsoft.
At some point you won't be able to buy an off the shelf PC without Vista.
Why do you think the big boys like Dell are now offering Ubuntu pre-loaded machines? It's to give the discerning buyer a choice - between a bloated, slow, insecure, untested, incompatible proprietary mess that's Vista, or an operating system!
Windows: A poor proprietary client for a Unix world!
A friend of mine who's a military history buff told me a story about Soviet fighter aircraft in the 70s and 80s. Seems they had very powerful look-down, shoot-down radars and pilots were instructed to turn them off during take off and landing. Apparently sometimes they forgot, and runway maintenance crews had to regularly pick up the carcasses of rabbits, birds and other unlucky critters that were in the area when those MiGs went on missions.
That's what we engineers would call "complete cobblers". The power intensity required to cook anything is remarkably high, and requires some time - your microwave oven takes some minutes before the "ding". Also, the frequency at which a microwave oven cooks is chosen because it resonates water molecules. The last thing you want is radar that can't "see" through clouds!
Or you could say, just kill the process in Windows.
Often you can't just kill the process in Windows. The "operating system" itself becomes unstable and requires restarting.
The whole point of computers in schools is to familiarise students with them.
Yes. So why not familiarise them with the types of operating systems that will predominate when they leave school? Windows is rapidly becoming irrelevant - especially now that Joe Sixpack can buy a Linux pre-loaded Dell. Outside the USA, Windows is rapidly becoming less prevalent, and is almost unknown in some major markets!
Keep any form of legislation out of it.
The only legislation that would have any positive effect is to prevent all users of Microsoft "operating systems" and "software" connecting. 90% of spam and other 'net crap is from compromised MS machines.
The entire IP stack of Vista/Longhorn has been reimplemented.
No it hasn't. It's the same old stolen (and later accredited) BSD code that Windows has always used. There's nobody left at Redmond that understands the ancient code, and it remains buried in the twisted, unmaintainable mess that is Vista.
Vista's just spaghetti code with a DRM sauce.
Chinese people are well aware there are better solutions out there than Windows for an operating system. It's only a matter of time before someone in power starts talking about "Red Flag Linux" and how it's openness can help prevent problems exactly like this... then it's all over for Microsoft in that market.
It already is all over for MS in most of the Third World. On a recent trip to the Far East, the only Windows machines I saw were on an airline check-in desk, and they'd all blue-screened! Every computer I saw was running some Unix variant - whether it was Linux, BSD, Solaris or Mac.
Microsoft has no significant presence in what is probably the biggest market in the world.
On similar business trips to Australia and to parts of South America, I have seen progressively less and less MS products. Consumers outside the USA have discovered that there are truly viable alternatives, and are fed up with all the insecurities, instabilities and expense of MS products that basically don't work properly (and can't ever work properly!).
Game Over, Microsoft!
A 40 MW hydro-electric plant would cost less than one-twentieth of the price of this plant, and would have much less environmental impact. This effort is a waste of time and money.