I'm torn. I just paid $130 for a 1.5TB drive that I don't feel entirely comfortable with (it has been plagued with firmware issues, which are SUPPOSEDLY resolved) by a company that purchased the Maxtor factory (which is almost the antonym of quality), and will use more power.
Yet a $299 price tag for a 2TB Green drive is almost double the cost, and I purchased 4 drives. I'd have to pay an extra $680, and as much as I'd prefer a Green WD drive, I don't think I can shell out the extra cash at the moment.
Except, that we don't call it Grub/GNU/Xorg/KDE/Linux. We don't call it by everything we attach to make a minimal distro. We simply call it Linux, because for the people that use Linux, the kernel is the only completely consistent aspect. The GNU tools are probably the second most consistent aspect of any Linux usage, but Linux does not completely depend on using the GNU tools.
Does anyone know the street date when these will be out, or price?
I've been worried about all the problems I'm been reading about the 1.5TB Barracuda drives. I've been waiting and waiting for something new to come along, but my current dig died the other day, so I bit the bullet and bought a new rig on NewEgg, including 4 of the Barracuda drives. If these are coming out soon, and at a reasonable price, I'm shipping the Barracudas back.
Rock Band is working on a Beatles game for Christmas, and rumors has it that part of Pearl Jam's huge marketing blitz launching in March will include the re-released Ten as a full album download for Rock Band.
Personally, I would kill for a full Rock Band/Guitar Hero centered on grunge rock from the 90's with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, leading into more modern bands like Foo Fighters, Audioslave, etc.
I'm about to install it myself today and find out if the reports are true, but many people who have tested it claim it is quite stable, and greatly improved from Vista. Given that I like playing PC games, and most games require DirectX, Windows 7 is likely in my future whether I want it to be or not.
There are reports that this beta is the most stable and polished beta Microsoft has ever released.
This is what I'm more interested in. Will there be a public RC in August? Will I have to crack the beta to keep using it until the official Windows 7 launch? Will I have to format the partition and go back to XP?
I'd be willing to test it, and even submit bug reports like a good beta tester, but I don't want to format in August. Give me a clear upgrade path to the full Windows 7, and I'd even consider (gasp) buying a legal copy.
I can't tell you how many game forums I've seen where games, and especially games with mods, don't work in Vista because UAC breaks folder privileges. In XP, I can run the game as a non-admin, and just elevate rights for specific files or specific folders. In Vista, the Program Files folder is sacrosanct territory and must be treated differently. Installing the game outside of that folder all buy bypasses UAC, rendering the so-called security useless.
As for Aero vs XP, download the Vista Transformation Pack, and run it with a true transparency app. You can run it quite well with onboard graphics, 512 MB of ram, and weak processor. I've installed it for people on older boxes that don't meet Vista's requirements, and it runs quite well. We have old junk laptops at work waiting to be tossed out, and I recently installed XP (with the Vista Transformation Pack) and then openSUSE 11.1 on it (old Celeron processor, upgraded the system to 512 MB RAM, and a GeForce 440) to compare composite on both. Both ran reasonably well. These is no way you can get Aero to run on that hardware. It isn't even possible.
I've developed XP sandboxes for my users when I make desktop images, or when I research and install individual apps. I find precisely what authority they need, and grant that. I find proper sandboxing to be easier in XP.
I think you are mistaken, as you did not correctly read what I wrote.
I described in the first group, people who got Vista because it was on the machine they bought.
And if you want to insist that Vista Just Works, then talk to the countless users who had hardware and driver issues, or hibernation issues. What about the fact that you get a 10% drop in networking performance if you're playing any audio?
Vista is a failure, acknowledged by many at Microsoft as a failure.
Vista's biggest problem in my book, is that XP was a fine release (post SP1) and that Vista has to compete with XP.
Clearly, in the case of poor UI design, blame the user.
Let me give you an example. In a "classic" or XP start menu, I hover, move and expand through the start menus without extra clicks. I can quickly navigate the menu.
For many users who only run a few apps, having a few pinned items works fine. But I have tons of apps, and tons of games installed. I actually need to navigate the menu.
In Vista, I have to click and drag on a scroll bar, click on a folder, lather, rinse, repeat. Navigating the menu takes considerably longer.
When the same task takes longer, this is a usability regression. It isn't just me. Independent usability testing found that most users took longer to perform the same tasks in Vista.
The fact that if you're determined, you can muddle though and manage to use the interface doesn't mean that the interface is good, or better than XP.
Vista is full of tons of tiny UI regressions that go back to a trend years and years in the making. I've noticed that Microsoft seems to design UIs lately around what looks good in a screenshot or mock-up. If it looks pretty, then who cares how it actually operates?
Compare the UI in WMP9, 10, 11 and 12. Arguably the player looks nicer in each incarnation, but using the app is less friendly with each new incarnation.
The new Vista start menu looks nicer because it doesn't explode out sloppily, but it is a usability regression.
Next take the explorer toolbar. The up button is removed. The interface looks cleaner, but the usability takes a hit for it.
Some people don't mind jumping through an extra hoop at every step. I'm not one of them.
You can get DX10 effects on a DX10 video card in XP by running DX10 libraries, and games in DX10 mode. That sure seems like DX10 to me.
How is Vista an improvement over XP?
Vista is slower, has a broken driver model, UAC is broken, configuration dialogs have been relocated for no apparent reason, the start menu is a disaster in usability, and simple tasks have now been changed to multi-step processes that take more time.
Computers are supposed to enable us. GUIs are supposed to make life simpler and more efficient. Vista gets in my way at every step.
I'm heading out the door, and I will respond with regressions, however for your supposed improvements:
XP allows you to run as a non-admin, and it is easier in XP. You can still elevate permissions, in a far less annoying fashion. Vista's UAC is a failure, and that is why it is greatly improved in Windows 7.
If you are surfing the web in IE, you fail. If you insist on running IE, you can run IE without permissions with IE7 in XP.
2000 supported transparency, but they didn't activate it. I'm running the Vista Transformation Pack. I have a translucent Aero interface on XP that runs faster than Vista. And Vista's driver model was so broken, that the composite effects eat up CPU resources. A proper composite system shouldn't eat up the CPU and memory so much, because it should offload to the GPU. For shits and giggles I installed openSUSE 11.1 on an old retired laptop with a GeForce 440 (32MB RAM) and I can run Compiz Fusion, and KDE 4's composite effects. However, I can't install Vista on the box, even without Aero. Windows 7 didn't rewrite Aero, but it fixed some of the driver issues, so Aero isn't so CPU-hungry. But in Vista, it is an abject failure.
The Start Menu is a huge regression. A scrollbar within the Start Menu? It takes me far more clicks, and far more time to get to what I'm looking for. The Vista menu is a usability nightmare. Adding search does not offset the poor design. It look pretty, but using it is a pain.
I've never had a crashed video driver ever in XP. For over six months after Vista's release, Nvidia couldn't release a decent working Vista driver at all. The video driver situation in Vista has been poor at best. Thankfully, this seems improved in Windows 7. The fact that Microsoft placed so much emphasis on fixing the issues with video drivers in Vista points out that it was problematic.
I've got BluRay working on XP.
I haven't tried Vista's MCE mode. Perhaps you can be more specific on why it is better. Is it is anything like the start menu being better?
You can run as a non-administrator in XP, and use "Run As" to elevate privileges. It isn't as much of a pain as UAC in Vista.
Vista isn't better in that regard.
Vista isn't faster than XP, because in real world performance, you need almost twice the system to get the same performance.
Lastly, and this really annoys me, the UI is far less efficient. I need to jump through extra steps to perform the same tasks. Even if Vista was quick and responsive on a low-end machine (which isn't the case), the UI design holds me back.
We're both relying on anecdotal evidence here, but I have yet to meet a single person that likes Vista.
Please explain to me the advantages Vista has, and for every advantage Vista has, I'll offer five major regressions.
I don't automatically hate Microsoft or Microsoft products. I'm not a fanboy. I keep a Windows partition, and I work primarily as a SysAdmin on Windows boxes.
Vista however is a terrible, terrible OS, and even the people I talk to who run Vista, do so for the above three reasons I stipulated, except I have yet to even meet a fanboy who fits in the third category. I just assume some must exist who like Vista.
Most end-users running Vista are doing so because they aren't comfortable changing their OS, those who absolutely must have DirectX 10 and don't realize you can get it on XP with some hackery, or Microsoft fans who insist on running Microsoft's latest release.
I'm not sure any of those three groups will care that much about Vista SP2. The first is largely uneducated on technical matters. The second is only fixated on gaming, and the third will be Windows 7 early adopters.
Vista SP2 however is aimed largely at the first group, who bought their computer with Vista preinstalled, and likely won't jump to 7. Microsoft has to support those users for years to come.
Re:wish tmobile would offer the same
on
Get Out of Sprint Free
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Or buy a cheap replacement phone off Ebay and then wait until your contract is up.
The Office Compatibility pack only helps users of 2003 to open 2007 documents. 2000 users are still left out in the cold. Your company would have had to migrate either way.
Debian, Ubuntu, SLES/SLED, openSUSE, Gentoo, Frugalware, PLD and others automatically include the go-oo builds in their repositories. All those users are using it daily for testing.
Furthermore, OxygenOffice and NeoOffice are built on-top of go-oo, and thusly those users are also using the go-oo improvements to test them out.
As for alpha, beta and RC releases, the go-oo releases mirror the upstream releases.
I run the unstable snapshots myself and have only once run into a single noticeable bug that wasn't in upstream OOo at the time.
The point being that by default, Office 2007 saves in the new 2007 format. End users don't understand saving in legacy formats, and Microsoft has been dropping some legacy support in case you missed it. If you use Office 2000, and someone sends you a 2003 or 2007 file, you're forced to upgrade.
Futhermore, if you think DOCX hasn't really changed from the 97 format, I don't know what to tell you. DOCX is vastly different from the DOC file format.
Because eventually they'll have to upgrade to Office 2007 or switch to OOo. A good chunk of the world distributes Office 2003 files right now, and they wouldn't be able to open them. Microsoft's constantly changing file format forces the world to upgrade.
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I'm torn. I just paid $130 for a 1.5TB drive that I don't feel entirely comfortable with (it has been plagued with firmware issues, which are SUPPOSEDLY resolved) by a company that purchased the Maxtor factory (which is almost the antonym of quality), and will use more power.
Yet a $299 price tag for a 2TB Green drive is almost double the cost, and I purchased 4 drives. I'd have to pay an extra $680, and as much as I'd prefer a Green WD drive, I don't think I can shell out the extra cash at the moment.
Except, that we don't call it Grub/GNU/Xorg/KDE/Linux. We don't call it by everything we attach to make a minimal distro. We simply call it Linux, because for the people that use Linux, the kernel is the only completely consistent aspect. The GNU tools are probably the second most consistent aspect of any Linux usage, but Linux does not completely depend on using the GNU tools.
Hurd was released in a working state?
I must have missed it.
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi?currentPage=all
Does anyone know the street date when these will be out, or price?
I've been worried about all the problems I'm been reading about the 1.5TB Barracuda drives. I've been waiting and waiting for something new to come along, but my current dig died the other day, so I bit the bullet and bought a new rig on NewEgg, including 4 of the Barracuda drives. If these are coming out soon, and at a reasonable price, I'm shipping the Barracudas back.
Didn't GH3 boast 80 songs? And it got free DLC as well. I don't believe GH:Aerosmith got free DLC, so I don't expect Metallica will either.
GH:WT also has tons and tons of songs.
I expect they'll still charge $60 for the game.
Rock Band is working on a Beatles game for Christmas, and rumors has it that part of Pearl Jam's huge marketing blitz launching in March will include the re-released Ten as a full album download for Rock Band.
Personally, I would kill for a full Rock Band/Guitar Hero centered on grunge rock from the 90's with Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Temple of the Dog, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, leading into more modern bands like Foo Fighters, Audioslave, etc.
I'm about to install it myself today and find out if the reports are true, but many people who have tested it claim it is quite stable, and greatly improved from Vista. Given that I like playing PC games, and most games require DirectX, Windows 7 is likely in my future whether I want it to be or not.
There are reports that this beta is the most stable and polished beta Microsoft has ever released.
This is what I'm more interested in. Will there be a public RC in August? Will I have to crack the beta to keep using it until the official Windows 7 launch? Will I have to format the partition and go back to XP?
I'd be willing to test it, and even submit bug reports like a good beta tester, but I don't want to format in August. Give me a clear upgrade path to the full Windows 7, and I'd even consider (gasp) buying a legal copy.
KDE 4 lets you use KDE 3 and older QT apps just fine. You can use GTK apps just fine.
I suspect you were using the horribly broken Kubuntu packages. The Kubuntu guys didn't know to package KDE properly and made a mess of things.
And frankly, if the brand new, still being developed KDE 4 wasn't good enough for you, why not stick with KDE 3, or try Gnome?
I don't get going to Windows for most people. Then again, I do actually prefer Windows to Gnome. That's just me.
I also recommend you check out KDE 4.2 on openSUSE in a VM.
I'm more curious to see real world results. How well can you overclock this on air?
I just ordered the same proc, a 790GX mobo, and a 1 gig HD 4850 yesterday on the cheap. The cpu+mobo combo was $295, and the video card was $161.
Intel still has the top end market, but at these prices, I'm pretty happy with what AMD is offering.
I can't tell you how many game forums I've seen where games, and especially games with mods, don't work in Vista because UAC breaks folder privileges. In XP, I can run the game as a non-admin, and just elevate rights for specific files or specific folders. In Vista, the Program Files folder is sacrosanct territory and must be treated differently. Installing the game outside of that folder all buy bypasses UAC, rendering the so-called security useless.
As for Aero vs XP, download the Vista Transformation Pack, and run it with a true transparency app. You can run it quite well with onboard graphics, 512 MB of ram, and weak processor. I've installed it for people on older boxes that don't meet Vista's requirements, and it runs quite well. We have old junk laptops at work waiting to be tossed out, and I recently installed XP (with the Vista Transformation Pack) and then openSUSE 11.1 on it (old Celeron processor, upgraded the system to 512 MB RAM, and a GeForce 440) to compare composite on both. Both ran reasonably well. These is no way you can get Aero to run on that hardware. It isn't even possible.
I've developed XP sandboxes for my users when I make desktop images, or when I research and install individual apps. I find precisely what authority they need, and grant that. I find proper sandboxing to be easier in XP.
I think you are mistaken, as you did not correctly read what I wrote.
I described in the first group, people who got Vista because it was on the machine they bought.
And if you want to insist that Vista Just Works, then talk to the countless users who had hardware and driver issues, or hibernation issues. What about the fact that you get a 10% drop in networking performance if you're playing any audio?
Vista is a failure, acknowledged by many at Microsoft as a failure.
Vista's biggest problem in my book, is that XP was a fine release (post SP1) and that Vista has to compete with XP.
Clearly, in the case of poor UI design, blame the user.
Let me give you an example. In a "classic" or XP start menu, I hover, move and expand through the start menus without extra clicks. I can quickly navigate the menu.
For many users who only run a few apps, having a few pinned items works fine. But I have tons of apps, and tons of games installed. I actually need to navigate the menu.
In Vista, I have to click and drag on a scroll bar, click on a folder, lather, rinse, repeat. Navigating the menu takes considerably longer.
When the same task takes longer, this is a usability regression. It isn't just me. Independent usability testing found that most users took longer to perform the same tasks in Vista.
The fact that if you're determined, you can muddle though and manage to use the interface doesn't mean that the interface is good, or better than XP.
Vista is full of tons of tiny UI regressions that go back to a trend years and years in the making. I've noticed that Microsoft seems to design UIs lately around what looks good in a screenshot or mock-up. If it looks pretty, then who cares how it actually operates?
Compare the UI in WMP9, 10, 11 and 12. Arguably the player looks nicer in each incarnation, but using the app is less friendly with each new incarnation.
The new Vista start menu looks nicer because it doesn't explode out sloppily, but it is a usability regression.
Next take the explorer toolbar. The up button is removed. The interface looks cleaner, but the usability takes a hit for it.
Some people don't mind jumping through an extra hoop at every step. I'm not one of them.
You can get DX10 effects on a DX10 video card in XP by running DX10 libraries, and games in DX10 mode. That sure seems like DX10 to me.
How is Vista an improvement over XP?
Vista is slower, has a broken driver model, UAC is broken, configuration dialogs have been relocated for no apparent reason, the start menu is a disaster in usability, and simple tasks have now been changed to multi-step processes that take more time.
Computers are supposed to enable us. GUIs are supposed to make life simpler and more efficient. Vista gets in my way at every step.
I'm heading out the door, and I will respond with regressions, however for your supposed improvements:
XP allows you to run as a non-admin, and it is easier in XP. You can still elevate permissions, in a far less annoying fashion. Vista's UAC is a failure, and that is why it is greatly improved in Windows 7.
If you are surfing the web in IE, you fail. If you insist on running IE, you can run IE without permissions with IE7 in XP.
2000 supported transparency, but they didn't activate it. I'm running the Vista Transformation Pack. I have a translucent Aero interface on XP that runs faster than Vista. And Vista's driver model was so broken, that the composite effects eat up CPU resources. A proper composite system shouldn't eat up the CPU and memory so much, because it should offload to the GPU. For shits and giggles I installed openSUSE 11.1 on an old retired laptop with a GeForce 440 (32MB RAM) and I can run Compiz Fusion, and KDE 4's composite effects. However, I can't install Vista on the box, even without Aero. Windows 7 didn't rewrite Aero, but it fixed some of the driver issues, so Aero isn't so CPU-hungry. But in Vista, it is an abject failure.
The Start Menu is a huge regression. A scrollbar within the Start Menu? It takes me far more clicks, and far more time to get to what I'm looking for. The Vista menu is a usability nightmare. Adding search does not offset the poor design. It look pretty, but using it is a pain.
I've never had a crashed video driver ever in XP. For over six months after Vista's release, Nvidia couldn't release a decent working Vista driver at all. The video driver situation in Vista has been poor at best. Thankfully, this seems improved in Windows 7. The fact that Microsoft placed so much emphasis on fixing the issues with video drivers in Vista points out that it was problematic.
I've got BluRay working on XP.
I haven't tried Vista's MCE mode. Perhaps you can be more specific on why it is better. Is it is anything like the start menu being better?
You can run as a non-administrator in XP, and use "Run As" to elevate privileges. It isn't as much of a pain as UAC in Vista.
Vista isn't better in that regard.
Vista isn't faster than XP, because in real world performance, you need almost twice the system to get the same performance.
Lastly, and this really annoys me, the UI is far less efficient. I need to jump through extra steps to perform the same tasks. Even if Vista was quick and responsive on a low-end machine (which isn't the case), the UI design holds me back.
The UI is a HUGE regression from XP.
We're both relying on anecdotal evidence here, but I have yet to meet a single person that likes Vista.
Please explain to me the advantages Vista has, and for every advantage Vista has, I'll offer five major regressions.
I don't automatically hate Microsoft or Microsoft products. I'm not a fanboy. I keep a Windows partition, and I work primarily as a SysAdmin on Windows boxes.
Vista however is a terrible, terrible OS, and even the people I talk to who run Vista, do so for the above three reasons I stipulated, except I have yet to even meet a fanboy who fits in the third category. I just assume some must exist who like Vista.
Most end-users running Vista are doing so because they aren't comfortable changing their OS, those who absolutely must have DirectX 10 and don't realize you can get it on XP with some hackery, or Microsoft fans who insist on running Microsoft's latest release.
I'm not sure any of those three groups will care that much about Vista SP2. The first is largely uneducated on technical matters. The second is only fixated on gaming, and the third will be Windows 7 early adopters.
Vista SP2 however is aimed largely at the first group, who bought their computer with Vista preinstalled, and likely won't jump to 7. Microsoft has to support those users for years to come.
Or buy a cheap replacement phone off Ebay and then wait until your contract is up.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en
The Office Compatibility pack only helps users of 2003 to open 2007 documents. 2000 users are still left out in the cold. Your company would have had to migrate either way.
Debian, Ubuntu, SLES/SLED, openSUSE, Gentoo, Frugalware, PLD and others automatically include the go-oo builds in their repositories. All those users are using it daily for testing.
Furthermore, OxygenOffice and NeoOffice are built on-top of go-oo, and thusly those users are also using the go-oo improvements to test them out.
As for alpha, beta and RC releases, the go-oo releases mirror the upstream releases.
I run the unstable snapshots myself and have only once run into a single noticeable bug that wasn't in upstream OOo at the time.
Thunderbird, Evolution, or just ditch Exchange and go with Zimbra.
Much cheaper and much nicer.
The point being that by default, Office 2007 saves in the new 2007 format. End users don't understand saving in legacy formats, and Microsoft has been dropping some legacy support in case you missed it. If you use Office 2000, and someone sends you a 2003 or 2007 file, you're forced to upgrade.
Futhermore, if you think DOCX hasn't really changed from the 97 format, I don't know what to tell you. DOCX is vastly different from the DOC file format.
Because eventually they'll have to upgrade to Office 2007 or switch to OOo. A good chunk of the world distributes Office 2003 files right now, and they wouldn't be able to open them. Microsoft's constantly changing file format forces the world to upgrade.