Uhhh...how EXACTLY is it my fault when I had nothing to do with the purchase or administration and was brought in after the whole thing was fscked?
If I had been brought in at the first I would have told them if there was a specific reason for switching to OSX, such as using a Mac mini as an office server or preferring Apple software that was fine, but my golden rule is magical thinking never works and is the realm of the gullible and the hucksters.
The ONLY answer to security is adherence to best practices with a least permissions for the job approach PERIOD. But sadly that takes time, planning, and diligence, so instead time and time again I see victims of "magical thinking". Magical thinking is "if I have product X I can do whatever I want and never think about security again!" and it NEVER never ever works. I don't care what box you throw on the network if you think magical thinking will automatically make everything okay you are in for a world of hurt, as that guy found out when he shelled out nearly 20k converting the whole shop to Macs only to watch his network get pwned from lack of good security practices.
But for some reasons some people just disparately want to believe in magical thinking, hell there is a troll that lurks here on/. that has assigned magical powers to the HOSTS file and will troll you for days if you dare to point out magical thinking doesn't work. So instead these SMBs and SOHOs fall for the latest magical McGuffin and then call me when it naturally goes to shit for lack of sound security practices. I'm like that old muffler commercial "you can pay me now...or you can pay me later".
I'm sorry but making WebM a religious war is just stupid, when except for the "free as in freedom!" crowd H.264 just makes more since. Does WebM give me superior file sizes? Nope. Better bandwidth use? Nope again. How about better compression without loss of picture quality? nuh uh. Does it work seamlessly with the millions of devices, many of which don't have the space for adding codecs, that already have support for H.264 acceleration? Not a chance.
With the exception of "free as in freedom!" which even then I would argue is seriously iffy since Google owns and controls the direction of WebM unlike the traditional community in FOSS, without "Free as in freedom!" frankly WebM wouldn't even rate a passing mention at all. So you really can't expect a proprietary company to toss something that works better for something that works worse just because it respects the "four freedoms".
That kind of thinking may fly in FOSS circles (see Gimp VS Photoshop for an example) but everywhere else a tech has to bring something better to the table than what is currently in use, and without "free as in freedom!" WebM brings not only nothing better to the table, but worse everything else, support, file sizes, picture quality, and bandwidth, than H.264. So unless you are a FOSS company H.264 is a no brainer.
As for TFA? Talk about a waste of time and money. There are two main camps in FOSS right now, the Linux GPL V2 corporate friendly camp, and the RMS "four freedoms at all cost" camp, and the two can't even agree with each other much less outsiders. Add to that the fact the RMS camp would probably rather have a lunch of broken glass and nails than collaborate with a company that doesn't hand over their code and the odds of anyone looking at this as anything but a conspiracy or "embrace extend" tactics is practically nil. Just look how many in this thread are in the "Die M$ Die!" camp for a good example of why this is a waste of time. You'll more likely get Apple to embrace GPL in its app store than get FOSS to embrace MSFT. There is just too much bad blood and differing beliefs to come to any real agreement.
I wouldn't say that is a good example, because MSFT offered them the standard RAND* licensing that they have been selling everyone else for years with regards to FAT32 and TomTom gave them the finger.
So I'd say that is a bad example as you're basically arguing against RAND which actually works quite well. With RAND a company can sink money into R&D and still get paid for their work without holding back innovation since the price is so low nearly anybody can use it without hurting the bottom line. Just look at all the BS we've had with regards to RAM thanks to Rambus deciding to secretly patent everything they heard at Jedec and ignore RAND. The industry ended up fighting lawsuits for over a decade, along with price fixing and a bunch of other messes, all in an attempt to deal with Rambus thanks to their trolling.
So if MSFT had said "Anyone that uses FOSS has to pay 300% more" I'd say that would be a good example, but just deciding RAND should be "free as in beer" just because you want it to be doesn't sound like a fair argument in light of how many years we've had RAND and seen that it works.
*-Oh and for those that don't know the lingo RAND stands for Reasonable And Non Discriminatory pricing. It has been SOP in the standardization process for decades now (and I think it would be easy to argue FAT32 is a standard considering how many manufacturers use it) and works quite well. Here is the Wiki Article for those that want to read up on it and see some examples, such as the submarine patents on GIF and JPEG as to why RAND is needed.
And I can see their point as JavaScript sucks security wise. lets be honest folks all these hacks like NoScript and sandboxing is just bandaids on bullet wounds, when what we need is either to rewrite JavaScript from the ground up with a focus on security or come up with a new language that allows the features we have come to depend on without having the wide latitude that we have with JavaScript.
I mean it is pretty sad that by just blocking JavaScript ads with ABP I cut my customers infection rate by a good 70%+ and if I add NoScript to that their risk of infection drops to practically nothing. I have a feeling we are gonna end up with the JavaScript equivalent of Code Red and then we'll have to find something else to use on websites because folks will simply kill JavaScript the way they don't use ActiveX anymore.
It is frankly just getting too risky to allow much JavaScript and while I feel sorry for website owners when so much malware comes in via JavaScript ads it simply isn't wise to allow them at all.
Uhhhh...why? Seriously both Intel and AMD have excellent power management and can drop the speed and thus voltage of cores not being used (I know AMD has had this since Phenom, I'm sure Intel has the same) and frankly if you really care about power usage not only do the default chips do a bang up job but both AMD and Intel offer ULV desktop and laptop chips that go even lower (AMD has the 610e which is a 45w max quad core, Intel I believe goes even lower) so honestly, what is the point?
If they want to give us better battery life in mobile devices they need to either come up with new battery tech or quit building everything with iSliver batteries! I'd love to seriously bitchslap the moron that thought you could rip off battery design from Apple, whose limited hardware set and control over the OS allows them to tailor the entire system to the design and apply those same iSliver batteries to general purpose machines running general purpose OSes like Windows or Android.
Let Apple keep the iSliver and give us real batteries or come up with some new tech already!
For example the classic file>edit>view menu being removed and replaced with a little icon on the side ala Chrome. In Chrome frankly you are supposed to take the defaults and the "fiddly bits" are kept far away from the user, but with FF you could get to everything simply using the classic file>edit>view KB commands. This is irritating and feels like change for change sake, as it is simply making the users drill deeper to get to the same place that could have been reached with just two clicks before.
Second there has been serious talk of doing away with the FF search box completely to replace it with in the address bar search, again ala Chrome. This works in Chrome because it is Google's browser and they expect you to go to Google and that's it. Sure you can change it but again that functionality is hidden away from the user. One of the nice features of FF to me is how quickly and easily I can switch search engines on the fly, going from Yahoo to Wikipedia to amazon in seconds. Again this feels more like change for change sake since Chrome did it FF has to do it too.
Frankly I could probably go on all day, like with the new icons losing definition and becoming more Chrome like (which works in Chrome because nobody changes themes in Chrome, but FF has an excellent persona community but the new icons look like shit if you don't stick to defaults.
But if you read TFL that is the problem with cargo cult usability, in that on the surface it looks correct but when you try to drill down deeper it fails. Just as GNOME trying to ape OSX fails because Linux is a windows based OS whereas the OSX design is based on applications.
With FF it seems like ever since Google started pushing Chrome instead of simply focusing on what works for FF they have instead been obsessed with Chrome, such as all their focus on JavaScript performance while the memory bloats out of control. It has gotten to the point that I've had to switch to Dragon on my nettop simply because the bloat in FF has gotten out of control and a half a day of multiple tab opening and closing would have FF eating nearly the entire 1.5Gb of RAM. Now even though I have the exact same extensions in Dragon it just doesn't go "runaway RAM" on me like FF has of late.
It just seems to me Mozilla is worried about the superficial things like scoring the highest on some benchmark against Chrome while not dealing with the fundamentals like memory usage and responsiveness. Sadly even with all their talk about performance gains even though Dragon (Chromium based) is running in the more secure low rights mode, it is actually more responsive for me that FF even with FF having higher permissions. But like I said if I wanted Chrome I'd be running it 24/7 so I hope FF changes their course, I'm just not holding my breath.
Dude you are getting two conversations mixed up there. The AGP part was me trying to figure out exactly how you managed to run out of PCI slots. And I understand completely about PCI, which was why I told customers if they wanted a PCI capture card that needed to be pretty much it as far as cards went, but from my experience they didn't go nuts on the timing when it came to the little add ons like extra USB ports or SATA, as long as you weren't trying to squeeze more than 2 SATA lines on a card.
As for the server comment that is pretty much all a P3 is good for anymore. The modern web and apps simply take more horse than a P3 can muster. Believe me I know, as I have a customer on a 1.1Ghz P3 and my GF's oldest son refuses to let go of his P3 SFF. In both cases even with me stripping XP down like a used Buick web surfing on those machines is seriously painful. I've done everything I can for them, maxed them out on RAM, picked the lowest resource using AV that actually works (IME Comodo gets the best results per cycle) but while I'm all for saving money there comes a point where you just have to accept a machine just won't cut it anymore.
But if you've managed to last this long with a P3 I'm happy for you but with the price of electricity going up soon it simply won't be cost effective to keep the old junk. A Shiva plug can do most of your basic server roles while sipping just 9w of power, and the new desktops barely sip power compared to the dinosaurs. Like I said before the trick is to balance it all without ending up penny wise and pound foolish.
Its the same reasoning behind the new PCs I've been building for folks living rooms. By replacing all the power sucking gadgets with a single box with the aggressive PC power management they replace a whole lot of gadgets and cut down on their electric bill while getting more useful functionality to boot. Now they have movies, games, media serving, web, jukebox, all from a single box controlled with a wireless KB and mouse and wired into the widescreen TV they already had. IMHO it is smarter to consolidate as much as possible with an eye towards power efficiency than it is to have three or four boxes doing simple tasks that could be done by one multitasking machine.
Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.
I mean what are they gonna offer their users besides a "me too!" laundry list of appearance and features that will always be behind the one they are trying to ape? And as a FF users if I wanted the Chrome UI why would I just use Chrome or one of the million Chromium based browsers instead of FF?
That is why with the last couple of updates to the 3.6.x branch and after looking at FF 4 I've started testing Chromium based Comodo Dragon. I mean if they end up turning FF into a bad Chrome ripoff why wouldn't I just use a Chromium based browser, where with the looks I get increased security thanks to low rights mode on modern OSes?
I've always been a Mozilla user, since back in the days of the old suite. But I really don't like the way the browser seems to be headed of late. It is becoming seriously memory hogging, slow to react on netbooks/nettops, and the UI from the looks of FF 4 will just end up a bad Chrome ripoff. I'd hate to see FF die out, but it seems to me they are becoming the very thing they split off from the suite over, a bloated slow mess. Maybe one of the FOSS groups can fork it and maybe go back to the old days of just a slim browser that the user decided what extras it had via plugins?
The one that gets me is how many home users think storage space is memory. They'll come into my shop and say "I want more memory!" and I'll say "No problem, how much you want? 2Gb? 4Gb?" and they say "I want enough memory to hold all my songs!"
As for TFA, sorry Mac guys but it was inevitable. it was only a matter of time before you got on the bad guys radar and now that Mac is Intel based they can cook up a Hackentosh if they don't want to shell out for a Mac to have a nice target to practice on. After all it isn't like the parts your average Mac has is rare and exotic anymore. Hell just look at the way Android has been hit lately, with increasing popularity comes more malware, because the simple fact is ALL OSes are extremely complex pieces of code now, and with complexity comes vulnerability. Not to mention the weakest points in Windows (Adobe Flash and Reader for example) usually have a Mac counterpart.
So allow me to be one of the first to say "Welcome to the game OSX users". Soon you'll have to have AV and actually pay attention to what you are doing same as the Windows guys. Of course I knew this a couple of years back when I had a local SMB buy into magical thinking with "If we replace Windows with OSX we'll never have to worry about security again!" and promptly got pwned when his teenager trying to get free porn installed the DNS Changer bug. It turned out the classic "Want to see teh boobies? Instal our free "Iz_Not-a-Bug codec" social engineering crosses OS boundaries quite well.
Uhhh...you DO know you can go back to Win95 look and appearance if that is your cup o' tea Yes? Here is a handy list that gives you step by step on turning anything off you want and putting classic back if you really want Win98. Why you would want to go back I'll never know, but the nice thing about Windows is it can always be done!
But if you use the above list with Ultimate Windows Tweaker you can customize Win 7 to YOUR way of doing things in just a couple of clicks. like some things but not others? Keep what you like, toss what you don't. This isn't like Apple you know, where you don't get a choice. Hell turn everything off and go back to the Win98 GUI if that makes you happy!
They make half height PCI cards for SATA, usually just one or two dollars more. I don't see how anyone would manage to use up all their PCI slots anymore, as onboard sound has been good enough for years and if you are talking P3 you probably have AGP for graphics (unless you bought one of those shitty low end Compaqs with no graphics port, in which case I'm sorry) and if your PC is so short of cycles it can't drive a SATA card then it really is time to move up, and as far as OS goes they usually have 98-Win 7 drivers and Linux usually have those chips covered so unless you are running BeOS?
And frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the new AMD CPUs used less power than your P3. Between the lower powered chipsets, the more efficient PSU, and Cool&Quiet cycling down the CPU in the tenths of a second range they really are power sippers. They have new low power duals and triple dirt cheap, and even the quads just don't crank the heat like the old days. My 925 quad usually runs at around 84 degrees f, and when I pound the hell out of it the temp rarely reaches 120f.
It all comes down to like I said, being careful not to be penny wise and pound foolish. When you have AMD quad barebone kits at just $200 it would be pound foolish to stick with something seriously old. Browsers, AV, and other applications are only gonna get more resource intensive as security features like sandboxing and virtualization is added, and if your machine is more than 5 years old there are simply going to be more and more websites and programs that you simply won't be able to run as time goes on.
I can see hanging onto a late model P4 to save some money, even though it will probably come out behind on electricity in the long run, but a P3? I'm sorry dude but surfing the modern web on that has to be borderline masochism. Better to use the truly ancient junk as a file server and have a good cheapie to do your everyday surfing and programs on.
If you are talking desktop a SATA PCI adapter is dirt cheap nowadays, and in fact it is often cheaper to just get the adapter an a decent sized SATA than it is to pay for a decent sized IDE anymore. As for the 2Tb barrier simply use any one of the bazillion free tool CDs out there (I am partial to Ultimate BootCD myself) and partition it into 2 1Tb drives.
That said 1Tb still seems to be the "sweet pot" price wise, although 2Tb drives are falling fast enough I wouldn't be surprised if they are the sweet spot within 3 months.
As for TFA? The economy is a corpse, duh! People are scared, prices are going up all over the place, so nobody is spending money they don't have to. I've been getting a lot more calls to fix and upgrade existing units lately than I have been new builds, although the $200 quad core kits are still moving decently, especially when you point out that it'll easily last for many years without ever slowing down unlike those aging P4s, and with Cool&Quiet they use a hell of a lot less power than those Netburst P4s as well.
While I'm all for saving money it doesn't pay to be penny wise and pound foolish, especially with those space heater P4s so many have.
Uhhh...you DO know none of the problems you listed apply to Windows since Vista, yes? Let us be consistent here, I mean it isn't like we are comparing Win 7 to system 7 either, so at least compare like to like.
And if Mac is so secure, why does it consistently fall first in "pwn to own"? To me pwn to own seems like the fairer test, since you A.-have an equal reason to pwn all three machines (because you get to keep it and they are nice machines) and B.-have the same bog standard software like flash that a good 90%+ of the public is likely to have.
The simple fact is ALL OSes are seriously complex pieces of code now, and with complexity comes vulnerability. The main weakness in Windows (running as admin) was removed with Vista and now with 7 you simply never run as admin (even the admin account in 7 has less rights than the old XP admin, and like *NIX and OSX is almost never needed) and with DEP, ASLR, and file and registry virtualization Windows has gotten pretty damned secure. Sadly though all the security in the world doesn't stop social engineering and working PC repair I can tell you nearly every infected PC that crosses my desk was infected by the user via social engineering tactics.
Noooo...I'd say what is happening is he is being trapped by the current HR BS where they just put all applications into a computers and playing buzzword bingo with them and he ain't hitting the correct buzzwords.
Sadly between that and the "hire NOT to hire an American" bullshit while there are plenty of jobs listed actually getting a decent one is increasingly hard, which is why I decided to take the plunge and open my own little shop. I'll never get rich but I make a decent living and don't have to deal with the BS.
Just look at the things some of these jobs are asking for and you'll quickly be able to spot the "How NOT to hire an American" bullshit at work. We are talking jobs asking for 10 years of Java, 7 of.NET, years of IT management experience and for a starting pay of $24k. Sadly just check your local help wanted to see how badly this "How NOT to hire an American" BS has spread, depending on the area you are looking at as high as 60% of the job listings being bullshit.
So the guy is probably just running into the same BS many of my friends with years of experience ran into, on the one hand you have HR looking for buzzword bingo, on the other how not to hire an American with bullshit postings designed to get them an H1-B wage slave. Either way you look at it it isn't pretty and these corps have no one but themselves to blame by gutting the market with all the offshoring and H1-Bs. You'd have to be nuts to be just starting out and pick IT over medical or legal right now!
Yes it does, and it is fricking brilliant! All you do is right click on the Explorer icon in the Task Bar and tada! There is a list of the last 10 folders you've accessed, no matter how deep in the file system, all listed by folder name. Lord you have NO idea how damned handy that is, when you need to get back to something you were working on the other day it is just click>>there it is. Man that is just wonderful!
I know you're a Linux guy but you should really try dual booting with 7 (you can get a 90 day trial of business for free at the MSFT website last I checked), it will change your mind about Windows and usability. And this is coming from a guy that hated XP's fisher price UI and absolutely loathed Vista. In fact I had already compiled a list of "how to make 7 act like classic" because I was THAT sure I'd hate it, but almost from the first day of Beta 2 I was like "Wow!" everything is SOOO much better and it all "just works".
All the little things just come together so it is all smooth and seamless, it makes it easy for both the noob and the long term users, it has a ton of easy to use tools like Windows DVD Maker, it is just soooo nice. You can burn MP3 data discs by just drag and drop in WMP 12, the breadcrumbs feature makes it trivial to drill several layers deep in ANY direction with a single click, the search feature built into ALL of the UI components makes finding anything trivial, it is rock solid stable (been pushing it hard since Beta 2 and not a single BSOD or lock up) and has to be the quickest and easiest to use OS I have ever used! After trying 7 you look at XP/Vista like being stuck on a Win9X machine, it is that far ahead.
But don't take my word for it, download the free trial and give it a run. Hell Windows has never been cheaper (you can get the family pack online for $100, that is $33 a piece for 3 installs) and if your hardware is less than 5 years old it will all "just work" without hassle. How they made an OS that is great for noobs while still being faster and easier for power users and those with PC experience I don't know, but it all "just works" and I won't be going back to XP, hell no!
I'm sorry but I don't know where you got your information from but it is completely wrong. You don't actually need USB drivers in the WinNT arch (in fact I was happily using a 32Mb USB flash drive and a USB printer thanks to the USB HID drivers built into Win2K Pro) and in WinXP RC2 and above it was the same.
So while the iMac may have tossed other connections by default you simply have to realize at release of OSX Mac users had been in decline for several years thanks to horrible mismanagement and constituted barely 4% of the market. It wasn't until the explosion of the iPod, which wasn't launched until Oct 2001 and which really didn't gain massive momentum until 2003 with the release of the 2 gen, that Apple Macs started to regain some of the share lost under the Pepsi guy and gain the ability to influence the public perception.
So I'm sorry, but if you think a company with less than 4% of a market without serious influence can effectively steer the course of the other 96% I have a bridge you might be interested in. Now as I said I give them full credit for Firewire, as they had a MUCH larger share of the digital video and DTP crowd who needed the fastest connection possible to feed large amounts of video data to/from their Macs, but if Windows wouldn't have fixed the USB bug with WinXP do you REALLY think we'd have the glut of USB devices we have now, really? If you think about it your logic simply doesn't hold, sorry.
Ya see, that is what we get for being nice to foreigners. We should have/gets on soapbox with 100 foot American flag behind/ listened to the great General Patton, loaded them krauts up with American tanks and guns and pointed their ass right at Moscow! Hell we could have had the whole ball of wax by late 46, early 47 tops.
Then we could have tossed that girly metric system in the trash and made everyone use imperial units like God intended, put burger joints and AMERICAN theaters on every corner, and as far as the eye could see would be lovely billboards in the gorgeous red, white, and blue that said in 50 foot letters "SPEAK ENGLISH DAMMIT!"
Oh what a wonderful world it would have been, instead you got a space station with gassy cabbage eating Ruskies, stinky Frenchies with their stinkier cheeses, and the Japs will probably use the thing as a testing ground for their latest contestant in their "WTF keep that walking corpse away from me" drive to create the creepiest android evar! No thanks, let 'em have the thing I say.
Creative? Sadly Creative which I used to love (Still have SoundBlaster and Audigy sound cards sitting in my closet) just haven't put anything out but total shit drivers in the past 4 years or so. Hell the Audigy is brand new and was given to me free by a customer who got tired of beating his head against the wall with the shitty drivers. I helped him load the updated Realtek drivers for his board and tada! All his headaches just magically went away.
So you can't really blame Windows 7 for that one, as they have no control on QA for third parties, especially if they bypass having the "Designed for " Windows logo. Your best bet is to either run the onboard Realtek (nearly all the boards have decent Realtek onboard now) or pick up one of the nice ASUS prosumer cards. They are a little pricey but the sound quality is unmatched and the drivers "just work" without any BS or bugginess like the Creative ones.
But if you have no control over the hardware, since you didn't say if this is a personal or company workstation, and you can't change/toss the card there IS a way to get around the problem. Just use the headphone jack on the speakers and if they aren't easy to reach a little cheap headphone extender cable (Monoprice has them for something like $4) will give you the extra length and will bypass the buggy driver issue. I had a customer that needed his Creative for the extra I/O and by running his phones this way it solved the buggy driver issue, since the Creative manager never saw any switching in the I/O no matter whether he had headphones in or not.
Its a bit of a hack I admit, but when you have no choice sometimes the simplest solution is the best. With my customer he is now able to switch between headphones and speakers to monitor sound quality without risking causing a glitch and screwing up what he's working on. So if nothing else this WILL fix your problem, its just like I said a bit of a hack to get around the driver bug.
Hi circletimessquare! I hate ta break the news to you but guess what our mid east policies are based on? Ready? "Jesus won't come back!". Yep, fraid so, wish I was kidding, sadly not. I live next to a heavily conservative college that donates to the right wing and gets many movers and shakers to lecture there, and I'm afraid that is pretty much it.
So I hate to tell you that while I agree that Iran is batshit, sadly when it comes to religion our leaders are just as batshit as they are. I mean when you base your foreign policy for an entire region, as well as give away BILLIONS of dollars you don't have to a country that routinely tells us to go fuck ourselves in return, all because some text written on a sheep's ass by goat herders half a world away 20 centuries plus ago says that if we don't a two thousand year dead man won't have a place to park his fluffy cloud?
I'm sorry but that is seriously fucked up and the fact that we prop up monsters like in Egypt just because they will play ball with "the chosen people" according to a sheepskin just means they have EVERY reason to hate us. Personally we should tell them "good luck!" and pack up our shit and go home. I have a feeling Israel wouldn't act like giant pricks if they knew they couldn't snap their fingers and have the USA cut them a check or send them some killer weapons tech.
Of course one thing you have to give them credit for is their skills in propaganda. I mean nobody in power dares say shit about Israel for fear of being labeled a Nazi loving antisemitic. Doesn't matter if their policies make things ever worse, or what they do to the Arabs, you say a word you'll be called antisemitic before you even set the mike down. Gotta give them credit where credit is due, and they are damned good at playing that card.
Hi MR AC! I really hate to use a meme, but in this case it is MOST appropriate: Correlation != Causation. If you will look at the timeline in question there is actually a very good reason why USB took off when it did and I would argue it had zipola to do with Apple.
You see MR AC, at the time USB was released we Windows users were by and large dealing with an OS known today as Win9X, aka "DOS with a pretty on top". Trouble was the pretty on top was about as stable as Charlie Sheen and USB was notorious for making it shit itself and die HARD. I'm sure you've seen the famous Gates Win98 presentation? Yeah, that was kinda what happened on a regular basis with USB, as Win9X didn't like things being plugged and unplugged like that. Now that kinda makes an interface whose big selling point was "just plug it in and go" kinda a dud when the first part gave you a 50/50 shot of BSOD and loss of your work.
So why did USB take off? Simple, MSFT killed Win9X (after releasing the disaster that was WinME...eeek!) for the vast majority of consumers (some of us were smart enough to jump to WinNT via Win2K while the consumers cursed their WinME machines) and by switching over to WinXP finally gave the masses an OS that they could actually plug USB devices into without BSODing and you'd be surprised what a difference not crashing makes!
So in conclusion MR AC, while I'm sure it gives Apple users the warm fuzzies to think they brought USB to the masses, and I will happily give them credit for Firewire, it was the death of Win9X that allowed users to migrate to the new peripheral. After all many such as myself had USB ports on our machines in 98/99 we just weren't crazy enough to actually plug anything into them. I swear Win9X could be so fussy that a USB KB or Mouse could make it go "ZOMG!" and wet itself. It was great for DOS games, everything else? Kinda not.
Oh I agree with you 110% on Ubuntu. I mean why in the hell would an OS that is so bleeding edge the CDs practically have stigmata be pushed out as the "Linux for humans" when we all know bleeding edge means seriously broken? That made absolutely NO sense to me whatsoever.
And when I get my next load of generic boxes in (had a load of customers and I'm down to a single office machine ATM) I'll give OpenSUSE a try. I was simply going by what the community said was the "easy to use for normal folks!" versions of Linux aka Ubuntu and PCLOS. To be fair PCLOS wasn't bad but its drivers were seriously flaky on some bog standard hardware like certain Realtek and SigmaTel chips. I have a little rule, if it won't work with what I consider the "bog standard" hardware, that is the stuff that a good 85%+ of PCs are shipping with...Realtek network and sound, SigmaTel sound on laptops and some nettops, Intel or AMD chipsets, just the same crap one sees day after day on your average Dell or Compaq, then it just ain't ready. My customers are mainly consumers and SOHO/SMB types, so spending time in the OS playing with CLI and fiddly bits simply isn't on the menu.
What sucks is the best damned Linux I ever tried, which got me through school without a single hiccup with EVERYTHING "just works" and clicky clicky easy actually costs MORE than Windows! If you've never tried Xandros OS you really should give it a spin, its ease of use was just amazing! Fully integrated app store via click n run where the user didn't need to know jack about dependencies or even the name of the app (since it is all sorted by category), could actually hook up to the AD network faster and quicker than XP could, MS Office and most of the other major apps for Windows that folks would want "just worked" thanks to integration of Crossover Office, it was just soooo nice to use! Sadly it costs more than an OEM of Windows so makes no sense whatsoever, but that's the problem in a nutshell.
I'm sure Xandros is barely scraping by while paying their developers, and with the "free as in beer" model I just don't see how desktop Linux will ever gain traction. Not that I'm a fan of Windows, I remember the days of Atari and Amiga and would love to have all the new ideas and innovation like we used to see, but bringing things up to the current standards of OSX and Windows is gonna cost serious money I just don't see being spent.
Lets face it: NOBODY likes the shit programming jobs. Nobody wants to spend their free time going through mounds of code looking for a funky bug, nor spend hours writing a huge amount of documentation, they just aren't fun and are long boring tedious BS work, so they just don't get done under the current FLOSS model.
So my thought is this: Maybe it is time to change the model? Something like the free for personal use but business pays like in the Windows world? Hell maybe even "buy the developer a sandwich" button that won't let you activate or download unless you give him a dollar? I just say there has to be SOME way to pay for the millions in R&D required to bring Linux desktop up to the levels that Linux server enjoys. Linux server gets millions invested by companies like RH, while the desktop by and large is left to guys in their free time which as I pointed out leaves the shit work unfinished. It is the same as how the proprietary world gets AAA games and the FOSS games are by and large Q3 DM clones with new skins.
One thing I'm sure you'll agree with me on is there is a LOT of long boring shitty tedious work when it comes to building a world class desktop OS. There is QA and testing, hunting down PITA bugs, writing docs, regression testing of new code, just a whole bunch of shitwork that somebody has to do and I just don't see how in the current model without some Apple sized corp paying developers to do those shit jobs that they will get done. Even RMS believes in the right to charge for code, just not locking up the source, so maybe a new way of looking at FOSS is in order?
Notice how I got modded down for daring to say anything other than "gee Biff, isn't Linux swell? It sure is Dave, and RMS's beards smells like roses!". Typical FOSS behavior, instead of intelligent discussion they simply try to hide those they don't agree with.
As for why OSX and Win 7 is light years ahead of Linux in its current form? I'll give a couple of example from my own life if you don't mind. My dad got impatient when his Win 7 family pack arrived and I told him it would be the weekend before I could come out and install it so he did it himself Now this is a guy that is about as clueless as they come, and for whom I'd usually have to come out at LEAST three time a month because he broke something in XP. So what happened?
In a word: perfection. Windows did ALL the work, downloaded and installed ALL the drivers, the worst question it asked him was "are you at home or at work?" and when it was done NOT A SINGLE FAILURE, not a yellow arrow in devices, nothing. Hell it even pointed out he didn't have an AV and pointed him to a free one. The only thing I had to do when I got there was show him where to get Firefox. That's it.
Now let us compare that to my last Linux install, Ubuntu 10.04 (or is it 10.10? It was the last LTS version) and compare, shall we? I won't even count the questions about partitioning that someone like my dad wouldn't have a clue about, because Canonical is getting better about pretty reasonable defaults, so I'll give them a pass. First boot....my sound don't work. Is there a helpful "Houston we have a problem?" nope, just no sound. Is there an offer to go on the Internet (which amazingly enough DID work, which it didn't on my last 4 installs) and get the drivers? Nope, nothing.
Now I could tell you about the Bataan death march it took me to get that machine up and running, the trawling for fixes through the forums, getting a bunch of CLI gibberish that frankly the common man wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of using without fucking up, the need to tweak said fix because it was designed for hardware a rev b and I had hardware d rev f, only to have the whole thing shit itself (along with both wired and wireless Internet) when I was stupid enough to actually let Linux update but you already KNOW this don't you Barbara? Hell you've probably done the "shit don't work" dance so many times it is like the waltz to you, and you can do the steps in your sleep.
But if you want Linux to be said in the same breath as OSX and Windows without it being the punchline or the belief of someone delusional, then ALL THAT SHIT has to go and that means serious QA, that means solid drivers that work OOTB without futzing, that means driver continue to work if you go from rabid wolfbat to serious xenu, and ALL of that is gonna mean being ass deep in shit jobs that frankly nobody wants to do in FLOSS so they just don't get done.
And before anybody says "but but but...if you go from XP to 7 shit breaks too!" the big difference is I get 14 years of support for XP and thanks to them tying the home and business version together (so one patch works on both) you are looking at 8 years minimum for any OS MSFT sells. Now of course Apple only offers two version back, but that is a different demographic and they don't hang onto machines as long so it "just works" for them. With Linux if you don't jump on the 6 month death march (Or as I used to call it the "break Linux NOW! button") then you are lucky if you get updates for a year, hell even the LTS is mainly about old shit more than actually keeping it functional and current without jumping on the update wagon.
So I'm sorry Ms. Hudson, but while I try your OS quite often in the hopes it will be ready for B&M retailers to offer to customers right now it simply isn't. It takes hell to get going, hell to get all the hardware functioning, and then it all goes to shit in six months or less when the updates hit and blo
If you want something that is just "clicky clicky" in Windows then there is the excellent free third party Comodo Time Machine. It lets you restore single files or the whole system, can take snapshots automatically (which it does by default) or you can tell it to take one with a single click, and if you bone the system to where it can't even boot restoration is as simple as push F11 at the clock symbol (which tells you in big letters which button to push to use it in case you forgot)>>>choose which time you'd like to send the machine back to>>>and that's it. It'll reboot and you're back up and running.
As for TFA it sounds like typical BOFH behavior to me. He doesn't like X so instead of letting the user decide whether he is right or wrong he just eliminates X for everyone. I'm sure his users really love him. More likely the day he is fired for pissing with the wrong PHB will be a day of much rejoicing in that company.
Hi Barbra! Nice to hear from another LinuxInsider lurker! And while I agree with most of what you've said (I personally believe netbooks will "settle down" but still have a pretty good market, as they are just too damned handy for students and casual use where mobility is king) it still doesn't address the main problem, and why I personally believe that Linux will never really have a shot at the consumer desktop.
The problem, and I'm sure you'd agree is that there are fun jobs and shit jobs in programming and frankly in the FLOSS "coders doing free work for the good of the community" the shit jobs just ain't being done. To get an OS up to the level of polish of OSX or Windows 7 means a LOT of shitwork, lots of bug fixes and writing docs and other work that is mind numbingly boring and about as fun as an impacted wisdom tooth. Now MSFT and Apple literally pay hundreds of millions over the life of an OS to get all those shit jobs done, but without the money, where is the motivation in Linux?
It is THIS, this right here, that is seriously holding Linux back and I truly believe will never allow Linux to reach the heights that it could were it a proprietary OS. It is miles behind the other two on levels of spit and polish simply because the spit and polish work sucks and therefor it just don't get done. Instead of bug fixing you just get new releases (because making new software is more fun than fixing old) with new bugs, you have placeholder for way too many docs, it is just a mess. The ONLY reason Linux works so well in server and embedded is that corps are spending millions to make it so and that money simply isn't being spent on desktop development.
So while I agree that Canonical and Ubuntu will most likely simply fade away, it will be a sad day for Linux when that happens. Sure they are seriously douchey in some of their actions but they got more attention focused on desktop usability than has been seen by the community approach in years. Frankly with all the talk of "Linux is ready for the desktop" after using Ubuntu and PCLOS (the big two home focused Linux OSes) I'd say that Linux is right now at Win9X level while everyone else has jumped ahead a decade and a half. Sure there are GUIs, but frankly most fall down under day to day strain and without the CLI you'd be toast (just as Win95 had GUIs that were often just covering up DOS) and for Linux to "break out" it really needs to come up to OSX and Win 7 levels, which I just don't see happening. It is sad, but it is just human nature. After all while someone might be happy to design your house for free, they sure as hell ain't gonna want to come in and fix the busted shitter for gratis.
And finally a bit about Android: Did you ever see "Pirates of Silicon Valley"? Remember the part where Jobs railed against IBM while the engineer tried to warn him by pointing at IBM and then pointing at Gates who was about to fuck Jobs over without Jobs even seeing it coming, in fact Jobs thought Gates and MSFT were a friend and ally of Apple? Yeah well about Android: Notice anything....funny...about Droid? Like how Google has gone out of their way to ensure no GPL V3 code is in Droid OS? Why do you think that is? I'll tell you, it is because Google and the handset OEMs are gonna "TiVo trick" the community and you don't even see it coming which is the sad part. It is like a sheep laughing at the old big bad wolf MSFT while leaning on his friend the young tiger.
So I wouldn't bet the farm on Google making Linux popular with Droid, because in the end you watch you'll have about as much "freedom" on your Droid as you have with your TiVo, that is none at all. And the guys that wrote what Droid runs on might as well have released under BSD for all the freedom GPL V2 gives them thanks to TiVo tricking.
Not to mention why in the hell would they suddenly shitcan everything for Windows 8 when finally, after all these damned years they got the UI right and made a major leap forward for the masses with Windows 7.
I have to say, and this is coming from an old Win2K guy that HATED the "fisher price UI" of XP, that Windows 7 UI is fricking brilliant. The new taskbar gives me instant access to my recently used folders in explorer automatically, no fiddling, jumplists gives me access to just about everything I'd want to do when launching an app, breadcrumbs makes it trivial to dive several folder deep in ANY direction in the time it takes me to make a single click, it all "just works".
And the best part, and I still haven't figured how they pulled it off yet, is that while they made it trivially easy for a guy like me that has been using Windows for years to get my tasks done faster and easier, at the same time they made it simpler and more intuitive for those like my dad who have never been good with computers. I gave dad the second beta of Windows 7 and after using it for just a couple of weeks pre-ordered the family pack so he'd "have a computer that made sense" as he put it. He has found and used more features in Windows 7 the very first week of use than he did with 9 YEARS of XP usage.
The integrated search bar is so much more than just a finder as it will give you related concepts such as me finding out and using the new performance center when looking for good old perfmon. Finally it helps the user find things they don't even know they had, such as dad plugging in his headset to chat and finding out about Windows 7 voice recognition.
So they'd be insane to just shitcan all that work when they finally have a winner on their hands. Both XP and Vista users whom I've let try Windows 7 have been quite happy to switch and never look back, it allows your older apps to work without needing the crazy constantly having to run as admin anymore, the UAC works without being clippy level of irritating like in Vista, frankly for the first time in ages they "got it right" and I just don't see them shitcanning it when Windows 8 is supposed to be released next year IIRC. My prediction is the next release will be all under the hood and an attempt to make web integration better, such as making it easy and seamless for folks like my dad to have their work and home PCs always interconnected and controllable anywhere he is.
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Uhhh...how EXACTLY is it my fault when I had nothing to do with the purchase or administration and was brought in after the whole thing was fscked?
If I had been brought in at the first I would have told them if there was a specific reason for switching to OSX, such as using a Mac mini as an office server or preferring Apple software that was fine, but my golden rule is magical thinking never works and is the realm of the gullible and the hucksters.
The ONLY answer to security is adherence to best practices with a least permissions for the job approach PERIOD. But sadly that takes time, planning, and diligence, so instead time and time again I see victims of "magical thinking". Magical thinking is "if I have product X I can do whatever I want and never think about security again!" and it NEVER never ever works. I don't care what box you throw on the network if you think magical thinking will automatically make everything okay you are in for a world of hurt, as that guy found out when he shelled out nearly 20k converting the whole shop to Macs only to watch his network get pwned from lack of good security practices.
But for some reasons some people just disparately want to believe in magical thinking, hell there is a troll that lurks here on /. that has assigned magical powers to the HOSTS file and will troll you for days if you dare to point out magical thinking doesn't work. So instead these SMBs and SOHOs fall for the latest magical McGuffin and then call me when it naturally goes to shit for lack of sound security practices. I'm like that old muffler commercial "you can pay me now...or you can pay me later".
I'm sorry but making WebM a religious war is just stupid, when except for the "free as in freedom!" crowd H.264 just makes more since. Does WebM give me superior file sizes? Nope. Better bandwidth use? Nope again. How about better compression without loss of picture quality? nuh uh. Does it work seamlessly with the millions of devices, many of which don't have the space for adding codecs, that already have support for H.264 acceleration? Not a chance.
With the exception of "free as in freedom!" which even then I would argue is seriously iffy since Google owns and controls the direction of WebM unlike the traditional community in FOSS, without "Free as in freedom!" frankly WebM wouldn't even rate a passing mention at all. So you really can't expect a proprietary company to toss something that works better for something that works worse just because it respects the "four freedoms".
That kind of thinking may fly in FOSS circles (see Gimp VS Photoshop for an example) but everywhere else a tech has to bring something better to the table than what is currently in use, and without "free as in freedom!" WebM brings not only nothing better to the table, but worse everything else, support, file sizes, picture quality, and bandwidth, than H.264. So unless you are a FOSS company H.264 is a no brainer.
As for TFA? Talk about a waste of time and money. There are two main camps in FOSS right now, the Linux GPL V2 corporate friendly camp, and the RMS "four freedoms at all cost" camp, and the two can't even agree with each other much less outsiders. Add to that the fact the RMS camp would probably rather have a lunch of broken glass and nails than collaborate with a company that doesn't hand over their code and the odds of anyone looking at this as anything but a conspiracy or "embrace extend" tactics is practically nil. Just look how many in this thread are in the "Die M$ Die!" camp for a good example of why this is a waste of time. You'll more likely get Apple to embrace GPL in its app store than get FOSS to embrace MSFT. There is just too much bad blood and differing beliefs to come to any real agreement.
I wouldn't say that is a good example, because MSFT offered them the standard RAND* licensing that they have been selling everyone else for years with regards to FAT32 and TomTom gave them the finger.
So I'd say that is a bad example as you're basically arguing against RAND which actually works quite well. With RAND a company can sink money into R&D and still get paid for their work without holding back innovation since the price is so low nearly anybody can use it without hurting the bottom line. Just look at all the BS we've had with regards to RAM thanks to Rambus deciding to secretly patent everything they heard at Jedec and ignore RAND. The industry ended up fighting lawsuits for over a decade, along with price fixing and a bunch of other messes, all in an attempt to deal with Rambus thanks to their trolling.
So if MSFT had said "Anyone that uses FOSS has to pay 300% more" I'd say that would be a good example, but just deciding RAND should be "free as in beer" just because you want it to be doesn't sound like a fair argument in light of how many years we've had RAND and seen that it works.
*-Oh and for those that don't know the lingo RAND stands for Reasonable And Non Discriminatory pricing. It has been SOP in the standardization process for decades now (and I think it would be easy to argue FAT32 is a standard considering how many manufacturers use it) and works quite well. Here is the Wiki Article for those that want to read up on it and see some examples, such as the submarine patents on GIF and JPEG as to why RAND is needed.
And I can see their point as JavaScript sucks security wise. lets be honest folks all these hacks like NoScript and sandboxing is just bandaids on bullet wounds, when what we need is either to rewrite JavaScript from the ground up with a focus on security or come up with a new language that allows the features we have come to depend on without having the wide latitude that we have with JavaScript.
I mean it is pretty sad that by just blocking JavaScript ads with ABP I cut my customers infection rate by a good 70%+ and if I add NoScript to that their risk of infection drops to practically nothing. I have a feeling we are gonna end up with the JavaScript equivalent of Code Red and then we'll have to find something else to use on websites because folks will simply kill JavaScript the way they don't use ActiveX anymore.
It is frankly just getting too risky to allow much JavaScript and while I feel sorry for website owners when so much malware comes in via JavaScript ads it simply isn't wise to allow them at all.
Uhhhh...why? Seriously both Intel and AMD have excellent power management and can drop the speed and thus voltage of cores not being used (I know AMD has had this since Phenom, I'm sure Intel has the same) and frankly if you really care about power usage not only do the default chips do a bang up job but both AMD and Intel offer ULV desktop and laptop chips that go even lower (AMD has the 610e which is a 45w max quad core, Intel I believe goes even lower) so honestly, what is the point?
If they want to give us better battery life in mobile devices they need to either come up with new battery tech or quit building everything with iSliver batteries! I'd love to seriously bitchslap the moron that thought you could rip off battery design from Apple, whose limited hardware set and control over the OS allows them to tailor the entire system to the design and apply those same iSliver batteries to general purpose machines running general purpose OSes like Windows or Android.
Let Apple keep the iSliver and give us real batteries or come up with some new tech already!
For example the classic file>edit>view menu being removed and replaced with a little icon on the side ala Chrome. In Chrome frankly you are supposed to take the defaults and the "fiddly bits" are kept far away from the user, but with FF you could get to everything simply using the classic file>edit>view KB commands. This is irritating and feels like change for change sake, as it is simply making the users drill deeper to get to the same place that could have been reached with just two clicks before.
Second there has been serious talk of doing away with the FF search box completely to replace it with in the address bar search, again ala Chrome. This works in Chrome because it is Google's browser and they expect you to go to Google and that's it. Sure you can change it but again that functionality is hidden away from the user. One of the nice features of FF to me is how quickly and easily I can switch search engines on the fly, going from Yahoo to Wikipedia to amazon in seconds. Again this feels more like change for change sake since Chrome did it FF has to do it too.
Frankly I could probably go on all day, like with the new icons losing definition and becoming more Chrome like (which works in Chrome because nobody changes themes in Chrome, but FF has an excellent persona community but the new icons look like shit if you don't stick to defaults.
But if you read TFL that is the problem with cargo cult usability, in that on the surface it looks correct but when you try to drill down deeper it fails. Just as GNOME trying to ape OSX fails because Linux is a windows based OS whereas the OSX design is based on applications.
With FF it seems like ever since Google started pushing Chrome instead of simply focusing on what works for FF they have instead been obsessed with Chrome, such as all their focus on JavaScript performance while the memory bloats out of control. It has gotten to the point that I've had to switch to Dragon on my nettop simply because the bloat in FF has gotten out of control and a half a day of multiple tab opening and closing would have FF eating nearly the entire 1.5Gb of RAM. Now even though I have the exact same extensions in Dragon it just doesn't go "runaway RAM" on me like FF has of late.
It just seems to me Mozilla is worried about the superficial things like scoring the highest on some benchmark against Chrome while not dealing with the fundamentals like memory usage and responsiveness. Sadly even with all their talk about performance gains even though Dragon (Chromium based) is running in the more secure low rights mode, it is actually more responsive for me that FF even with FF having higher permissions. But like I said if I wanted Chrome I'd be running it 24/7 so I hope FF changes their course, I'm just not holding my breath.
Dude you are getting two conversations mixed up there. The AGP part was me trying to figure out exactly how you managed to run out of PCI slots. And I understand completely about PCI, which was why I told customers if they wanted a PCI capture card that needed to be pretty much it as far as cards went, but from my experience they didn't go nuts on the timing when it came to the little add ons like extra USB ports or SATA, as long as you weren't trying to squeeze more than 2 SATA lines on a card.
As for the server comment that is pretty much all a P3 is good for anymore. The modern web and apps simply take more horse than a P3 can muster. Believe me I know, as I have a customer on a 1.1Ghz P3 and my GF's oldest son refuses to let go of his P3 SFF. In both cases even with me stripping XP down like a used Buick web surfing on those machines is seriously painful. I've done everything I can for them, maxed them out on RAM, picked the lowest resource using AV that actually works (IME Comodo gets the best results per cycle) but while I'm all for saving money there comes a point where you just have to accept a machine just won't cut it anymore.
But if you've managed to last this long with a P3 I'm happy for you but with the price of electricity going up soon it simply won't be cost effective to keep the old junk. A Shiva plug can do most of your basic server roles while sipping just 9w of power, and the new desktops barely sip power compared to the dinosaurs. Like I said before the trick is to balance it all without ending up penny wise and pound foolish.
Its the same reasoning behind the new PCs I've been building for folks living rooms. By replacing all the power sucking gadgets with a single box with the aggressive PC power management they replace a whole lot of gadgets and cut down on their electric bill while getting more useful functionality to boot. Now they have movies, games, media serving, web, jukebox, all from a single box controlled with a wireless KB and mouse and wired into the widescreen TV they already had. IMHO it is smarter to consolidate as much as possible with an eye towards power efficiency than it is to have three or four boxes doing simple tasks that could be done by one multitasking machine.
Sadly I think you are right. Looking at the latest beta it looks so much like a Chrome ripoff they may as well just drop Gecko for Webkit. I could understand if they made a change because it gave the user a feature that had been requested, but this strikes me too much like Cargo Cult Usability where you just ape the other guy without really understanding the reasons behind the design and that just isn't a good sign.
I mean what are they gonna offer their users besides a "me too!" laundry list of appearance and features that will always be behind the one they are trying to ape? And as a FF users if I wanted the Chrome UI why would I just use Chrome or one of the million Chromium based browsers instead of FF?
That is why with the last couple of updates to the 3.6.x branch and after looking at FF 4 I've started testing Chromium based Comodo Dragon. I mean if they end up turning FF into a bad Chrome ripoff why wouldn't I just use a Chromium based browser, where with the looks I get increased security thanks to low rights mode on modern OSes?
I've always been a Mozilla user, since back in the days of the old suite. But I really don't like the way the browser seems to be headed of late. It is becoming seriously memory hogging, slow to react on netbooks/nettops, and the UI from the looks of FF 4 will just end up a bad Chrome ripoff. I'd hate to see FF die out, but it seems to me they are becoming the very thing they split off from the suite over, a bloated slow mess. Maybe one of the FOSS groups can fork it and maybe go back to the old days of just a slim browser that the user decided what extras it had via plugins?
The one that gets me is how many home users think storage space is memory. They'll come into my shop and say "I want more memory!" and I'll say "No problem, how much you want? 2Gb? 4Gb?" and they say "I want enough memory to hold all my songs!"
As for TFA, sorry Mac guys but it was inevitable. it was only a matter of time before you got on the bad guys radar and now that Mac is Intel based they can cook up a Hackentosh if they don't want to shell out for a Mac to have a nice target to practice on. After all it isn't like the parts your average Mac has is rare and exotic anymore. Hell just look at the way Android has been hit lately, with increasing popularity comes more malware, because the simple fact is ALL OSes are extremely complex pieces of code now, and with complexity comes vulnerability. Not to mention the weakest points in Windows (Adobe Flash and Reader for example) usually have a Mac counterpart.
So allow me to be one of the first to say "Welcome to the game OSX users". Soon you'll have to have AV and actually pay attention to what you are doing same as the Windows guys. Of course I knew this a couple of years back when I had a local SMB buy into magical thinking with "If we replace Windows with OSX we'll never have to worry about security again!" and promptly got pwned when his teenager trying to get free porn installed the DNS Changer bug. It turned out the classic "Want to see teh boobies? Instal our free "Iz_Not-a-Bug codec" social engineering crosses OS boundaries quite well.
Uhhh...you DO know you can go back to Win95 look and appearance if that is your cup o' tea Yes? Here is a handy list that gives you step by step on turning anything off you want and putting classic back if you really want Win98. Why you would want to go back I'll never know, but the nice thing about Windows is it can always be done!
But if you use the above list with Ultimate Windows Tweaker you can customize Win 7 to YOUR way of doing things in just a couple of clicks. like some things but not others? Keep what you like, toss what you don't. This isn't like Apple you know, where you don't get a choice. Hell turn everything off and go back to the Win98 GUI if that makes you happy!
They make half height PCI cards for SATA, usually just one or two dollars more. I don't see how anyone would manage to use up all their PCI slots anymore, as onboard sound has been good enough for years and if you are talking P3 you probably have AGP for graphics (unless you bought one of those shitty low end Compaqs with no graphics port, in which case I'm sorry) and if your PC is so short of cycles it can't drive a SATA card then it really is time to move up, and as far as OS goes they usually have 98-Win 7 drivers and Linux usually have those chips covered so unless you are running BeOS?
And frankly I wouldn't be surprised if the new AMD CPUs used less power than your P3. Between the lower powered chipsets, the more efficient PSU, and Cool&Quiet cycling down the CPU in the tenths of a second range they really are power sippers. They have new low power duals and triple dirt cheap, and even the quads just don't crank the heat like the old days. My 925 quad usually runs at around 84 degrees f, and when I pound the hell out of it the temp rarely reaches 120f.
It all comes down to like I said, being careful not to be penny wise and pound foolish. When you have AMD quad barebone kits at just $200 it would be pound foolish to stick with something seriously old. Browsers, AV, and other applications are only gonna get more resource intensive as security features like sandboxing and virtualization is added, and if your machine is more than 5 years old there are simply going to be more and more websites and programs that you simply won't be able to run as time goes on.
I can see hanging onto a late model P4 to save some money, even though it will probably come out behind on electricity in the long run, but a P3? I'm sorry dude but surfing the modern web on that has to be borderline masochism. Better to use the truly ancient junk as a file server and have a good cheapie to do your everyday surfing and programs on.
If you are talking desktop a SATA PCI adapter is dirt cheap nowadays, and in fact it is often cheaper to just get the adapter an a decent sized SATA than it is to pay for a decent sized IDE anymore. As for the 2Tb barrier simply use any one of the bazillion free tool CDs out there (I am partial to Ultimate BootCD myself) and partition it into 2 1Tb drives. That said 1Tb still seems to be the "sweet pot" price wise, although 2Tb drives are falling fast enough I wouldn't be surprised if they are the sweet spot within 3 months.
As for TFA? The economy is a corpse, duh! People are scared, prices are going up all over the place, so nobody is spending money they don't have to. I've been getting a lot more calls to fix and upgrade existing units lately than I have been new builds, although the $200 quad core kits are still moving decently, especially when you point out that it'll easily last for many years without ever slowing down unlike those aging P4s, and with Cool&Quiet they use a hell of a lot less power than those Netburst P4s as well.
While I'm all for saving money it doesn't pay to be penny wise and pound foolish, especially with those space heater P4s so many have.
Uhhh...you DO know none of the problems you listed apply to Windows since Vista, yes? Let us be consistent here, I mean it isn't like we are comparing Win 7 to system 7 either, so at least compare like to like.
And if Mac is so secure, why does it consistently fall first in "pwn to own"? To me pwn to own seems like the fairer test, since you A.-have an equal reason to pwn all three machines (because you get to keep it and they are nice machines) and B.-have the same bog standard software like flash that a good 90%+ of the public is likely to have.
The simple fact is ALL OSes are seriously complex pieces of code now, and with complexity comes vulnerability. The main weakness in Windows (running as admin) was removed with Vista and now with 7 you simply never run as admin (even the admin account in 7 has less rights than the old XP admin, and like *NIX and OSX is almost never needed) and with DEP, ASLR, and file and registry virtualization Windows has gotten pretty damned secure. Sadly though all the security in the world doesn't stop social engineering and working PC repair I can tell you nearly every infected PC that crosses my desk was infected by the user via social engineering tactics.
Noooo...I'd say what is happening is he is being trapped by the current HR BS where they just put all applications into a computers and playing buzzword bingo with them and he ain't hitting the correct buzzwords.
Sadly between that and the "hire NOT to hire an American" bullshit while there are plenty of jobs listed actually getting a decent one is increasingly hard, which is why I decided to take the plunge and open my own little shop. I'll never get rich but I make a decent living and don't have to deal with the BS.
Just look at the things some of these jobs are asking for and you'll quickly be able to spot the "How NOT to hire an American" bullshit at work. We are talking jobs asking for 10 years of Java, 7 of .NET, years of IT management experience and for a starting pay of $24k. Sadly just check your local help wanted to see how badly this "How NOT to hire an American" BS has spread, depending on the area you are looking at as high as 60% of the job listings being bullshit.
So the guy is probably just running into the same BS many of my friends with years of experience ran into, on the one hand you have HR looking for buzzword bingo, on the other how not to hire an American with bullshit postings designed to get them an H1-B wage slave. Either way you look at it it isn't pretty and these corps have no one but themselves to blame by gutting the market with all the offshoring and H1-Bs. You'd have to be nuts to be just starting out and pick IT over medical or legal right now!
Yes it does, and it is fricking brilliant! All you do is right click on the Explorer icon in the Task Bar and tada! There is a list of the last 10 folders you've accessed, no matter how deep in the file system, all listed by folder name. Lord you have NO idea how damned handy that is, when you need to get back to something you were working on the other day it is just click>>there it is. Man that is just wonderful!
I know you're a Linux guy but you should really try dual booting with 7 (you can get a 90 day trial of business for free at the MSFT website last I checked), it will change your mind about Windows and usability. And this is coming from a guy that hated XP's fisher price UI and absolutely loathed Vista. In fact I had already compiled a list of "how to make 7 act like classic" because I was THAT sure I'd hate it, but almost from the first day of Beta 2 I was like "Wow!" everything is SOOO much better and it all "just works".
All the little things just come together so it is all smooth and seamless, it makes it easy for both the noob and the long term users, it has a ton of easy to use tools like Windows DVD Maker, it is just soooo nice. You can burn MP3 data discs by just drag and drop in WMP 12, the breadcrumbs feature makes it trivial to drill several layers deep in ANY direction with a single click, the search feature built into ALL of the UI components makes finding anything trivial, it is rock solid stable (been pushing it hard since Beta 2 and not a single BSOD or lock up) and has to be the quickest and easiest to use OS I have ever used! After trying 7 you look at XP/Vista like being stuck on a Win9X machine, it is that far ahead.
But don't take my word for it, download the free trial and give it a run. Hell Windows has never been cheaper (you can get the family pack online for $100, that is $33 a piece for 3 installs) and if your hardware is less than 5 years old it will all "just work" without hassle. How they made an OS that is great for noobs while still being faster and easier for power users and those with PC experience I don't know, but it all "just works" and I won't be going back to XP, hell no!
I'm sorry but I don't know where you got your information from but it is completely wrong. You don't actually need USB drivers in the WinNT arch (in fact I was happily using a 32Mb USB flash drive and a USB printer thanks to the USB HID drivers built into Win2K Pro) and in WinXP RC2 and above it was the same.
So while the iMac may have tossed other connections by default you simply have to realize at release of OSX Mac users had been in decline for several years thanks to horrible mismanagement and constituted barely 4% of the market. It wasn't until the explosion of the iPod, which wasn't launched until Oct 2001 and which really didn't gain massive momentum until 2003 with the release of the 2 gen, that Apple Macs started to regain some of the share lost under the Pepsi guy and gain the ability to influence the public perception.
So I'm sorry, but if you think a company with less than 4% of a market without serious influence can effectively steer the course of the other 96% I have a bridge you might be interested in. Now as I said I give them full credit for Firewire, as they had a MUCH larger share of the digital video and DTP crowd who needed the fastest connection possible to feed large amounts of video data to/from their Macs, but if Windows wouldn't have fixed the USB bug with WinXP do you REALLY think we'd have the glut of USB devices we have now, really? If you think about it your logic simply doesn't hold, sorry.
Ya see, that is what we get for being nice to foreigners. We should have /gets on soapbox with 100 foot American flag behind/ listened to the great General Patton, loaded them krauts up with American tanks and guns and pointed their ass right at Moscow! Hell we could have had the whole ball of wax by late 46, early 47 tops.
Then we could have tossed that girly metric system in the trash and made everyone use imperial units like God intended, put burger joints and AMERICAN theaters on every corner, and as far as the eye could see would be lovely billboards in the gorgeous red, white, and blue that said in 50 foot letters "SPEAK ENGLISH DAMMIT!"
Oh what a wonderful world it would have been, instead you got a space station with gassy cabbage eating Ruskies, stinky Frenchies with their stinkier cheeses, and the Japs will probably use the thing as a testing ground for their latest contestant in their "WTF keep that walking corpse away from me" drive to create the creepiest android evar! No thanks, let 'em have the thing I say.
Creative? Sadly Creative which I used to love (Still have SoundBlaster and Audigy sound cards sitting in my closet) just haven't put anything out but total shit drivers in the past 4 years or so. Hell the Audigy is brand new and was given to me free by a customer who got tired of beating his head against the wall with the shitty drivers. I helped him load the updated Realtek drivers for his board and tada! All his headaches just magically went away.
So you can't really blame Windows 7 for that one, as they have no control on QA for third parties, especially if they bypass having the "Designed for " Windows logo. Your best bet is to either run the onboard Realtek (nearly all the boards have decent Realtek onboard now) or pick up one of the nice ASUS prosumer cards. They are a little pricey but the sound quality is unmatched and the drivers "just work" without any BS or bugginess like the Creative ones.
But if you have no control over the hardware, since you didn't say if this is a personal or company workstation, and you can't change/toss the card there IS a way to get around the problem. Just use the headphone jack on the speakers and if they aren't easy to reach a little cheap headphone extender cable (Monoprice has them for something like $4) will give you the extra length and will bypass the buggy driver issue. I had a customer that needed his Creative for the extra I/O and by running his phones this way it solved the buggy driver issue, since the Creative manager never saw any switching in the I/O no matter whether he had headphones in or not.
Its a bit of a hack I admit, but when you have no choice sometimes the simplest solution is the best. With my customer he is now able to switch between headphones and speakers to monitor sound quality without risking causing a glitch and screwing up what he's working on. So if nothing else this WILL fix your problem, its just like I said a bit of a hack to get around the driver bug.
Hi circletimessquare! I hate ta break the news to you but guess what our mid east policies are based on? Ready? "Jesus won't come back!". Yep, fraid so, wish I was kidding, sadly not. I live next to a heavily conservative college that donates to the right wing and gets many movers and shakers to lecture there, and I'm afraid that is pretty much it.
So I hate to tell you that while I agree that Iran is batshit, sadly when it comes to religion our leaders are just as batshit as they are. I mean when you base your foreign policy for an entire region, as well as give away BILLIONS of dollars you don't have to a country that routinely tells us to go fuck ourselves in return, all because some text written on a sheep's ass by goat herders half a world away 20 centuries plus ago says that if we don't a two thousand year dead man won't have a place to park his fluffy cloud?
I'm sorry but that is seriously fucked up and the fact that we prop up monsters like in Egypt just because they will play ball with "the chosen people" according to a sheepskin just means they have EVERY reason to hate us. Personally we should tell them "good luck!" and pack up our shit and go home. I have a feeling Israel wouldn't act like giant pricks if they knew they couldn't snap their fingers and have the USA cut them a check or send them some killer weapons tech.
Of course one thing you have to give them credit for is their skills in propaganda. I mean nobody in power dares say shit about Israel for fear of being labeled a Nazi loving antisemitic. Doesn't matter if their policies make things ever worse, or what they do to the Arabs, you say a word you'll be called antisemitic before you even set the mike down. Gotta give them credit where credit is due, and they are damned good at playing that card.
Hi MR AC! I really hate to use a meme, but in this case it is MOST appropriate: Correlation != Causation. If you will look at the timeline in question there is actually a very good reason why USB took off when it did and I would argue it had zipola to do with Apple.
You see MR AC, at the time USB was released we Windows users were by and large dealing with an OS known today as Win9X, aka "DOS with a pretty on top". Trouble was the pretty on top was about as stable as Charlie Sheen and USB was notorious for making it shit itself and die HARD. I'm sure you've seen the famous Gates Win98 presentation? Yeah, that was kinda what happened on a regular basis with USB, as Win9X didn't like things being plugged and unplugged like that. Now that kinda makes an interface whose big selling point was "just plug it in and go" kinda a dud when the first part gave you a 50/50 shot of BSOD and loss of your work.
So why did USB take off? Simple, MSFT killed Win9X (after releasing the disaster that was WinME...eeek!) for the vast majority of consumers (some of us were smart enough to jump to WinNT via Win2K while the consumers cursed their WinME machines) and by switching over to WinXP finally gave the masses an OS that they could actually plug USB devices into without BSODing and you'd be surprised what a difference not crashing makes!
So in conclusion MR AC, while I'm sure it gives Apple users the warm fuzzies to think they brought USB to the masses, and I will happily give them credit for Firewire, it was the death of Win9X that allowed users to migrate to the new peripheral. After all many such as myself had USB ports on our machines in 98/99 we just weren't crazy enough to actually plug anything into them. I swear Win9X could be so fussy that a USB KB or Mouse could make it go "ZOMG!" and wet itself. It was great for DOS games, everything else? Kinda not.
Oh I agree with you 110% on Ubuntu. I mean why in the hell would an OS that is so bleeding edge the CDs practically have stigmata be pushed out as the "Linux for humans" when we all know bleeding edge means seriously broken? That made absolutely NO sense to me whatsoever.
And when I get my next load of generic boxes in (had a load of customers and I'm down to a single office machine ATM) I'll give OpenSUSE a try. I was simply going by what the community said was the "easy to use for normal folks!" versions of Linux aka Ubuntu and PCLOS. To be fair PCLOS wasn't bad but its drivers were seriously flaky on some bog standard hardware like certain Realtek and SigmaTel chips. I have a little rule, if it won't work with what I consider the "bog standard" hardware, that is the stuff that a good 85%+ of PCs are shipping with...Realtek network and sound, SigmaTel sound on laptops and some nettops, Intel or AMD chipsets, just the same crap one sees day after day on your average Dell or Compaq, then it just ain't ready. My customers are mainly consumers and SOHO/SMB types, so spending time in the OS playing with CLI and fiddly bits simply isn't on the menu.
What sucks is the best damned Linux I ever tried, which got me through school without a single hiccup with EVERYTHING "just works" and clicky clicky easy actually costs MORE than Windows! If you've never tried Xandros OS you really should give it a spin, its ease of use was just amazing! Fully integrated app store via click n run where the user didn't need to know jack about dependencies or even the name of the app (since it is all sorted by category), could actually hook up to the AD network faster and quicker than XP could, MS Office and most of the other major apps for Windows that folks would want "just worked" thanks to integration of Crossover Office, it was just soooo nice to use! Sadly it costs more than an OEM of Windows so makes no sense whatsoever, but that's the problem in a nutshell.
I'm sure Xandros is barely scraping by while paying their developers, and with the "free as in beer" model I just don't see how desktop Linux will ever gain traction. Not that I'm a fan of Windows, I remember the days of Atari and Amiga and would love to have all the new ideas and innovation like we used to see, but bringing things up to the current standards of OSX and Windows is gonna cost serious money I just don't see being spent.
Lets face it: NOBODY likes the shit programming jobs. Nobody wants to spend their free time going through mounds of code looking for a funky bug, nor spend hours writing a huge amount of documentation, they just aren't fun and are long boring tedious BS work, so they just don't get done under the current FLOSS model.
So my thought is this: Maybe it is time to change the model? Something like the free for personal use but business pays like in the Windows world? Hell maybe even "buy the developer a sandwich" button that won't let you activate or download unless you give him a dollar? I just say there has to be SOME way to pay for the millions in R&D required to bring Linux desktop up to the levels that Linux server enjoys. Linux server gets millions invested by companies like RH, while the desktop by and large is left to guys in their free time which as I pointed out leaves the shit work unfinished. It is the same as how the proprietary world gets AAA games and the FOSS games are by and large Q3 DM clones with new skins.
One thing I'm sure you'll agree with me on is there is a LOT of long boring shitty tedious work when it comes to building a world class desktop OS. There is QA and testing, hunting down PITA bugs, writing docs, regression testing of new code, just a whole bunch of shitwork that somebody has to do and I just don't see how in the current model without some Apple sized corp paying developers to do those shit jobs that they will get done. Even RMS believes in the right to charge for code, just not locking up the source, so maybe a new way of looking at FOSS is in order?
As a re
Notice how I got modded down for daring to say anything other than "gee Biff, isn't Linux swell? It sure is Dave, and RMS's beards smells like roses!". Typical FOSS behavior, instead of intelligent discussion they simply try to hide those they don't agree with.
As for why OSX and Win 7 is light years ahead of Linux in its current form? I'll give a couple of example from my own life if you don't mind. My dad got impatient when his Win 7 family pack arrived and I told him it would be the weekend before I could come out and install it so he did it himself Now this is a guy that is about as clueless as they come, and for whom I'd usually have to come out at LEAST three time a month because he broke something in XP. So what happened?
In a word: perfection. Windows did ALL the work, downloaded and installed ALL the drivers, the worst question it asked him was "are you at home or at work?" and when it was done NOT A SINGLE FAILURE, not a yellow arrow in devices, nothing. Hell it even pointed out he didn't have an AV and pointed him to a free one. The only thing I had to do when I got there was show him where to get Firefox. That's it.
Now let us compare that to my last Linux install, Ubuntu 10.04 (or is it 10.10? It was the last LTS version) and compare, shall we? I won't even count the questions about partitioning that someone like my dad wouldn't have a clue about, because Canonical is getting better about pretty reasonable defaults, so I'll give them a pass. First boot....my sound don't work. Is there a helpful "Houston we have a problem?" nope, just no sound. Is there an offer to go on the Internet (which amazingly enough DID work, which it didn't on my last 4 installs) and get the drivers? Nope, nothing.
Now I could tell you about the Bataan death march it took me to get that machine up and running, the trawling for fixes through the forums, getting a bunch of CLI gibberish that frankly the common man wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of using without fucking up, the need to tweak said fix because it was designed for hardware a rev b and I had hardware d rev f, only to have the whole thing shit itself (along with both wired and wireless Internet) when I was stupid enough to actually let Linux update but you already KNOW this don't you Barbara? Hell you've probably done the "shit don't work" dance so many times it is like the waltz to you, and you can do the steps in your sleep.
But if you want Linux to be said in the same breath as OSX and Windows without it being the punchline or the belief of someone delusional, then ALL THAT SHIT has to go and that means serious QA, that means solid drivers that work OOTB without futzing, that means driver continue to work if you go from rabid wolfbat to serious xenu, and ALL of that is gonna mean being ass deep in shit jobs that frankly nobody wants to do in FLOSS so they just don't get done.
And before anybody says "but but but...if you go from XP to 7 shit breaks too!" the big difference is I get 14 years of support for XP and thanks to them tying the home and business version together (so one patch works on both) you are looking at 8 years minimum for any OS MSFT sells. Now of course Apple only offers two version back, but that is a different demographic and they don't hang onto machines as long so it "just works" for them. With Linux if you don't jump on the 6 month death march (Or as I used to call it the "break Linux NOW! button") then you are lucky if you get updates for a year, hell even the LTS is mainly about old shit more than actually keeping it functional and current without jumping on the update wagon.
So I'm sorry Ms. Hudson, but while I try your OS quite often in the hopes it will be ready for B&M retailers to offer to customers right now it simply isn't. It takes hell to get going, hell to get all the hardware functioning, and then it all goes to shit in six months or less when the updates hit and blo
If you want something that is just "clicky clicky" in Windows then there is the excellent free third party Comodo Time Machine. It lets you restore single files or the whole system, can take snapshots automatically (which it does by default) or you can tell it to take one with a single click, and if you bone the system to where it can't even boot restoration is as simple as push F11 at the clock symbol (which tells you in big letters which button to push to use it in case you forgot)>>>choose which time you'd like to send the machine back to>>>and that's it. It'll reboot and you're back up and running.
As for TFA it sounds like typical BOFH behavior to me. He doesn't like X so instead of letting the user decide whether he is right or wrong he just eliminates X for everyone. I'm sure his users really love him. More likely the day he is fired for pissing with the wrong PHB will be a day of much rejoicing in that company.
Hi Barbra! Nice to hear from another LinuxInsider lurker! And while I agree with most of what you've said (I personally believe netbooks will "settle down" but still have a pretty good market, as they are just too damned handy for students and casual use where mobility is king) it still doesn't address the main problem, and why I personally believe that Linux will never really have a shot at the consumer desktop.
The problem, and I'm sure you'd agree is that there are fun jobs and shit jobs in programming and frankly in the FLOSS "coders doing free work for the good of the community" the shit jobs just ain't being done. To get an OS up to the level of polish of OSX or Windows 7 means a LOT of shitwork, lots of bug fixes and writing docs and other work that is mind numbingly boring and about as fun as an impacted wisdom tooth. Now MSFT and Apple literally pay hundreds of millions over the life of an OS to get all those shit jobs done, but without the money, where is the motivation in Linux?
It is THIS, this right here, that is seriously holding Linux back and I truly believe will never allow Linux to reach the heights that it could were it a proprietary OS. It is miles behind the other two on levels of spit and polish simply because the spit and polish work sucks and therefor it just don't get done. Instead of bug fixing you just get new releases (because making new software is more fun than fixing old) with new bugs, you have placeholder for way too many docs, it is just a mess. The ONLY reason Linux works so well in server and embedded is that corps are spending millions to make it so and that money simply isn't being spent on desktop development.
So while I agree that Canonical and Ubuntu will most likely simply fade away, it will be a sad day for Linux when that happens. Sure they are seriously douchey in some of their actions but they got more attention focused on desktop usability than has been seen by the community approach in years. Frankly with all the talk of "Linux is ready for the desktop" after using Ubuntu and PCLOS (the big two home focused Linux OSes) I'd say that Linux is right now at Win9X level while everyone else has jumped ahead a decade and a half. Sure there are GUIs, but frankly most fall down under day to day strain and without the CLI you'd be toast (just as Win95 had GUIs that were often just covering up DOS) and for Linux to "break out" it really needs to come up to OSX and Win 7 levels, which I just don't see happening. It is sad, but it is just human nature. After all while someone might be happy to design your house for free, they sure as hell ain't gonna want to come in and fix the busted shitter for gratis.
And finally a bit about Android: Did you ever see "Pirates of Silicon Valley"? Remember the part where Jobs railed against IBM while the engineer tried to warn him by pointing at IBM and then pointing at Gates who was about to fuck Jobs over without Jobs even seeing it coming, in fact Jobs thought Gates and MSFT were a friend and ally of Apple? Yeah well about Android: Notice anything....funny...about Droid? Like how Google has gone out of their way to ensure no GPL V3 code is in Droid OS? Why do you think that is? I'll tell you, it is because Google and the handset OEMs are gonna "TiVo trick" the community and you don't even see it coming which is the sad part. It is like a sheep laughing at the old big bad wolf MSFT while leaning on his friend the young tiger.
So I wouldn't bet the farm on Google making Linux popular with Droid, because in the end you watch you'll have about as much "freedom" on your Droid as you have with your TiVo, that is none at all. And the guys that wrote what Droid runs on might as well have released under BSD for all the freedom GPL V2 gives them thanks to TiVo tricking.
Not to mention why in the hell would they suddenly shitcan everything for Windows 8 when finally, after all these damned years they got the UI right and made a major leap forward for the masses with Windows 7.
I have to say, and this is coming from an old Win2K guy that HATED the "fisher price UI" of XP, that Windows 7 UI is fricking brilliant. The new taskbar gives me instant access to my recently used folders in explorer automatically, no fiddling, jumplists gives me access to just about everything I'd want to do when launching an app, breadcrumbs makes it trivial to dive several folder deep in ANY direction in the time it takes me to make a single click, it all "just works".
And the best part, and I still haven't figured how they pulled it off yet, is that while they made it trivially easy for a guy like me that has been using Windows for years to get my tasks done faster and easier, at the same time they made it simpler and more intuitive for those like my dad who have never been good with computers. I gave dad the second beta of Windows 7 and after using it for just a couple of weeks pre-ordered the family pack so he'd "have a computer that made sense" as he put it. He has found and used more features in Windows 7 the very first week of use than he did with 9 YEARS of XP usage.
The integrated search bar is so much more than just a finder as it will give you related concepts such as me finding out and using the new performance center when looking for good old perfmon. Finally it helps the user find things they don't even know they had, such as dad plugging in his headset to chat and finding out about Windows 7 voice recognition.
So they'd be insane to just shitcan all that work when they finally have a winner on their hands. Both XP and Vista users whom I've let try Windows 7 have been quite happy to switch and never look back, it allows your older apps to work without needing the crazy constantly having to run as admin anymore, the UAC works without being clippy level of irritating like in Vista, frankly for the first time in ages they "got it right" and I just don't see them shitcanning it when Windows 8 is supposed to be released next year IIRC. My prediction is the next release will be all under the hood and an attempt to make web integration better, such as making it easy and seamless for folks like my dad to have their work and home PCs always interconnected and controllable anywhere he is.