It took me quite a while to find even the undo command. The toolbar command is right next to the Office button, at the top of the screen, thus conforming to Fitt's law as befits a commonly used operation. Alternatively, use ctrl-z. Alternatively, if you prefer the old-style keyboard accelerators, alt+e+u still works fine.
Inserting a footnote now requires a whole series of mouse clicks as far as I can tell. Insert -> Footer -> Blank. Three clicks; exactly the same number as before. Alternatively, just double-click at the bottom of the document. That would be 2 clicks, in rapid sucession.
Go try something relatively obscure like turning on line numbering in a document and changing the style of the line numbers. It took me 10 minutes... Page layout -> Line numbers -> Continuous. Three clicks. For line numbering options: Page layout -> Line numbers -> Line numbering options. That took me about 10 seconds.
BTW, all the old keyboard shortcuts still work exactly as before (including the alt+x+y accelerators)
FFS. No-one needs to be 're-trained' to use an Office suite, whether it's Word 2007, Openoffice, or any other. It's an office suite! You click on the page-like thing and type words. All the major, often-used icons look exactly the same (or at least have the same basic shape and are recognisable) in every office suite I can think of.
Even when you get beyond the icons you still don't need any retraining unless you're a compete idiot. You want to view the ruler? Openoffice: press the view menu, click 'ruler'. Office 2007: press the 'view' tab, click 'ruler'. It's not rocket science.
Anyone advanced enough to be actually seriously affected by the changes is either intelligent enough to be able to learn any differences (in OOo or in O2007) in 30 seconds flat after flicking through the menus / tabs respectively; or else has just memorised all the keyboard shortcuts anyway -- which all work as they've always done in Office 2007, and (though I haven't tried it) I'd be astonished if they didn't in OopenOffice.
GNOME office for GNOME / KOffice for KDE / MS Works for Windows are the usual 'lightweight office suite' suggestions. Alternatively, if you're happy to use a web-based office suite (which not everyone is), Google Docs & Spreadsheets has been mentioned a few times on Slashdot, though I've never used it myself.
Classic Menu gives you an Office-2003-like set of menus. It'll help you navigate old menu structures to find favorite commands, but don't expect to use all the familiar keyboard shortcuts Ummm, you can already use all the old keyboard shortucts on Office 2007 (yes, including all the menu-based alt+x+y+z ones). They all work just as they did before. There's new ribbon-based ones as well, but all the old ones still work transparently.
I'm just quoting TFA:
One thing I liked about Ubuntu was the way you could browse in the Add/Remove Applications list for free software hand-picked by the Ubuntu community. The closest thing in Vista is the Digital Locker feature, where you can purchase software online and download it in a protected fashion. By the sound of it from the article, that's what you're getting in Vista - trialware crippled with DRM.
Are you telling me that OpenOffice, GIMP and Firefox are available through Microsoft's "Digital Locker"? If so I must say I'm surprised. Nice selective quoting. The sentence immediately after the one you quoted began: "In addition, a number of free/trial programs are available...". Note the "in addition". The free/trial programs don't use digital locker, because there's be no point. The point of digital locker is to keep the licenses for bought software, probably to stop you copying and sharing it; since one of the points of F/OSS is that you can copy and share it with everyone, what possible reason would there be for F/OSS distributors to opt to use digital locker? Common sense.
So yes, you can get Openoffice, GIMP, Firefox etc. through 'get programs online'; but no, they don't use digital locker; they're not trialware; they don't use DRM. (I'm pretty sure that rebundling OO, Firefox etc. as trialware or with DRM would be against the GPL in any case).
Both of them lead the reader to believe that Vista, has replaced everything of importance to the user. I've just had a look at the Wikipedia pages again. They list, in quite some detail, exactly what has been changed and what is new, both on the surface and underneath. Is there anything there (most notably in the latter page, which describes the kernel & core OS changes) that you believe to be false? If so, and you have evidence, change the page and cite it, it is a Wiki. Even if there's just something on the page that you think goes beyond the remit of the sources there, raise it in the talk page or add a {{fact}} tag. Even if you believe that Wikipedia is controlled by Microsoft shills, you could always post it here; I'm sure the Slashdot editors wouldn't surpress your opinions...
Not really. When the MS first brought in Windows NT, it was solely a business OS -- home users had 3.1/9x. It's only since WIndows XP that the consumer line has used the NT codebase as well (Vista is NT 6.0).
The problem with getting your information about Vista from Apple's propoganda is that when you're trying to evangelise to Windows users, they realise that what you're saying is crap, and ignore you -- even if whatever you're evangelising is genuinely more secure than what they're using (which it obviously definitely is with Linux as compared to Windows).
But no, what your AC sock puppets have claimed is not true - this won't work on gnu/linux. It only works for Vista by exploiting M$ specific flaws. Those flaws were originally designed to lock you out of your kernel and it looks like they have done exactly that. Umm, no. Rootkits existed for Windows long before Vista and kernel patch protection. Rootkits exist for Linux. Rootkits exist for MacOS. Newsflash: if you compromise a system at the kernel level, your system is -- wait for it -- compromised. Obviously.
Show me the gnu/linux demonstration and I might believe you. Google is your friend. A quick Google gives: SucKIT, Rial, heroin, afhrm, Synapsis, adore, knark, itf, kis as some exanples. That's almost certainly not a comprehensive list, and I've no idea whether it's current. And, of course I'm certainly not saying "Linux is less secure than Windows" or "Linux is insecure" by this list -- Windows has many rootkits too (I'm guessing considerably more than Linux, but I have no figures); and if you practice good security policy, you should never be infected -- on any OS.
After the reset they re-used much of the code from XP. Wrong way round. As VertigoAce notes, it was the pre-reset builds which were based of XP; the post-reset ones were based on 2003 Server.
The wikipedia entry, which they pay people to write, claims, "hundreds of new features; some of the most significant include an updated graphical user interface and visual style dubbed Windows Aero, improved searching features, new multimedia creation tools such as Windows DVD Maker, and completely redesigned networking, audio, print, and display sub-systems." In short new everything, which clearly is not true Ummm, no. You seem to have a serious misconception about what exactly an operating system is. Multimedia features, searching features, even networking, audio print etc. subsystems do not an OS make. The kernal is still the NT kernel -- with some changes, but still broadly the same -- which is why Vista is NT 6.0. No-one at Microsoft has ever claimed otherwise; no Wikipedia editor has ever claimed otherwise.
In this case, I bet a good comparison for several people would be: "This OS showed much better reproduction of the deck when playing solitaire". For anyone interested in the comparison:
I'm guessing you've only ever used RPM or something. Try a modern Debian-based distro such as... well, Ubuntu. Apt / Synaptic handles all dependency issues, updates etc. silently and auomatically. It really is very, very good -- infinitely better than it used to be on Linux. And I say that as a Windows user, not a Linux zealot (see my posting history if you don't believe me).
The beautiful thing about a *nix install is/home/username Backup everything in there and when you hose the system/upgrade/reinstall it's all there. Everything. [...] Windows users like to claim something like this occurs, but as a desktop admin that just migrated another wonky drive last week, license restrictions bugger up the whole thing! Huh? Your home directory in Windows has nothing to do with licensing or WGA; it contains your documents and application settings. Apart from anything else, licensing is obviously system-wide whereas home directories are per-user. I don't see any difference between Linux and Vista in this respect. In fact, changing your home folder location is probably easier in Windows since you can just drag and drop it to wherever you want to automatically change its official location (%homepath% etc.) and create a symlink from its original location (i.e. c:\users\SEMW\Documents will by symlinked to, day, D:\documents auomatically).
Browsing and downloading tens of thousands of programs which are monetarily and philosophically free.
Verses
Browsing and downloading a handful of programs, either for a price, or trialware, all crippled with DRM. Wow; I didn't know that Openoffice, Firefox, and the GIMP were "trialware... crippled with DRM"! I was under the impression that they were "monetarily and philosophically free", but since you can download them (amongst thousands of other F/OSS apps) from the Windows "Add/remove programs -> Get new programs online" link, they must actually, by your logic, be DRM-crippled trialware! Well, now I know; thanks for educating me!
Doing this will turn UAC prompts into normal dialogue boxes: theoretically less secure than before, but there shouldn't really be any reason for malware writers to try take advantage of this since the number of people who will switch secure desktop off is hopefully small.
(BTW: yes, for some unearthly reason the procedure is more complicated for the home versions than the pro versions. F***ing stupid, but there you go).
Can vista allow you to add repositories to the Add/remove programs dialog? Is it actually aware of what a repository is? No, and no. Because Windows doesn't use repositories for program management.
Does it actually install software that is not in the vista CD, but actually downloadable if you really need it? Yes.
Is that Add/Remove dialog actually more than an "Install those worthless windows programs that are not installed by default, else uninstall whatever you added to this computer" dialog? Yes.
You're comment would be equally true if you substitue Windows for Ubuntu. You don't need to pay for Antivirus/Antispyware tools on Windows; you can use VMWare / VirtualPC whilst running Windows as your main OS.
I call bull. My mother's just bought a new laptop which has Intel "Graphics Media Accelerator" integrated graphics -- probably several orders of magnitude less powerful that your Radeon, and no dedicated graphics memory at all -- and it runs Aero perfectly smoothly.
OOWriter... Scribus... LyX... Bluefish... GIMP... OODraw... Inkscape... OOCalc... Numeric Python... a Fortran compiler... Each one of those programs for Windows requires an expensive single seat software license. Bullshit.
Out of the 10 programs you mention, 9 are available for Windows. None require an "expensive single seat software license" because they're all free and open source. The only one that doesn't is Bluefish, and trust me there is no shortage of freeware HTML editors for Windows.
The only way I can think of your logic being in any way valid is if you have someone who has some moral objections to using open source apps; as if, just because they have bought Windows, they would now feel some sort of compulsion to not use free applications. Which is a load of crap. Using Windows doesn't force you to use only paid closed source apps any more than using a crystal glass forces you to only drink mineral rather than tap water.
So, when I click on "Add New Programs", it comes up with a list of thousands of programs that I could install? No, you say? Debating is always more fun when you don't know what you're talking about, isn't it?
Back in the real world, admittedly, no, when you first open "add/remove programs" it doesn't come up immediately with a list of thousands of programs you can install. In order to see that list, you need to click "Get new programs online" (which opens in your default web browser, not necessarily IE). Admittedly, clicking something is apparently an incredibly onerous task in Windows given the number of compaints about UAC we see here; but I'm not sure it in itself is enough to dismiss the feature entirely out of hand...
And yes, they have all the major open source apps for Windows there; including Openoffice, Firefox, and the GIMP.
Vista's Add/Remove Programs panel probably served as the inspiration for Ubuntu's software management console. This disturbs me as the person who has written the article had not previously used Ubuntu until he/she decided to write this article. Ubuntu, I can firmly say, has been around significantly longer than Vista. To be fair, he could have been including pre-release versions: Longhorn development started 2002ish; Ubuntu first forked from Debian in 2004. Plus it wasn't till 5.04 (April '05) that Ubuntu even included the Add/Remove programs panel; by which time MS was firmly past the Longhorn 'reset' and had just released the WinHEC 2005 build (the one Thurrott described as a "train wreck").
The section concerning Image-Editing/Picture management being a tie also seems to give more credit to Vista. The fact of having GIMP alone blows vista out of the water let alone the several picture managers available on Ubuntu. GIMP is also available for Windows. But he still gave the *editing* advantage to Ubuntu solely because Ubuntu comes bundled with it by default, saving you the time it would take to download it. The only reason the section ended up "50-50" was that he didn't think any of Ubuntu's picture-management programs (specifically F-spot) had the polish or metadata capabilities of Photo gallery. That was his opinion: IMO, if you want polish in photo management in Linux then Picasa is available to download; but since it's equally available for Windows that still can't exactly be described as an advantage for either of them.
the first question on the Chinese test seems impossible -- it asks you to prove that two lines are perpendicular even though they don't intersect So what if they don't intersect? If they're at 90 degrees to each other (i.e. if the dot product of their direction vectors is zero), they're perpendicular.
The real fun will start if someone manages to let the operating system protect a malware's subjects and objects (processes, files, registry keys, etc.) by using its digital restrictions management or code signature features. If someone manages to crack a standard implementation of public key AES encryption, which is basically what code signing is, we're going to have a hell of a lot more problems than more malware...
Slashdot Mirror
BTW, all the old keyboard shortcuts still work exactly as before (including the alt+x+y accelerators)
FFS. No-one needs to be 're-trained' to use an Office suite, whether it's Word 2007, Openoffice, or any other. It's an office suite! You click on the page-like thing and type words. All the major, often-used icons look exactly the same (or at least have the same basic shape and are recognisable) in every office suite I can think of.
Even when you get beyond the icons you still don't need any retraining unless you're a compete idiot. You want to view the ruler? Openoffice: press the view menu, click 'ruler'. Office 2007: press the 'view' tab, click 'ruler'. It's not rocket science.
Anyone advanced enough to be actually seriously affected by the changes is either intelligent enough to be able to learn any differences (in OOo or in O2007) in 30 seconds flat after flicking through the menus / tabs respectively; or else has just memorised all the keyboard shortcuts anyway -- which all work as they've always done in Office 2007, and (though I haven't tried it) I'd be astonished if they didn't in OopenOffice.
GNOME office for GNOME / KOffice for KDE / MS Works for Windows are the usual 'lightweight office suite' suggestions. Alternatively, if you're happy to use a web-based office suite (which not everyone is), Google Docs & Spreadsheets has been mentioned a few times on Slashdot, though I've never used it myself.
Are you telling me that OpenOffice, GIMP and Firefox are available through Microsoft's "Digital Locker"? If so I must say I'm surprised. Nice selective quoting. The sentence immediately after the one you quoted began: "In addition, a number of free/trial programs are available...". Note the "in addition". The free/trial programs don't use digital locker, because there's be no point. The point of digital locker is to keep the licenses for bought software, probably to stop you copying and sharing it; since one of the points of F/OSS is that you can copy and share it with everyone, what possible reason would there be for F/OSS distributors to opt to use digital locker? Common sense.
So yes, you can get Openoffice, GIMP, Firefox etc. through 'get programs online'; but no, they don't use digital locker; they're not trialware; they don't use DRM. (I'm pretty sure that rebundling OO, Firefox etc. as trialware or with DRM would be against the GPL in any case).
Not really. When the MS first brought in Windows NT, it was solely a business OS -- home users had 3.1/9x. It's only since WIndows XP that the consumer line has used the NT codebase as well (Vista is NT 6.0).
The problem with getting your information about Vista from Apple's propoganda is that when you're trying to evangelise to Windows users, they realise that what you're saying is crap, and ignore you -- even if whatever you're evangelising is genuinely more secure than what they're using (which it obviously definitely is with Linux as compared to Windows).
("What triggers a UAC prompt"
Vista solitaire
Klondike solitaire
I'm guessing you've only ever used RPM or something. Try a modern Debian-based distro such as... well, Ubuntu. Apt / Synaptic handles all dependency issues, updates etc. silently and auomatically. It really is very, very good -- infinitely better than it used to be on Linux. And I say that as a Windows user, not a Linux zealot (see my posting history if you don't believe me).
Verses
Browsing and downloading a handful of programs, either for a price, or trialware, all crippled with DRM. Wow; I didn't know that Openoffice, Firefox, and the GIMP were "trialware... crippled with DRM"! I was under the impression that they were "monetarily and philosophically free", but since you can download them (amongst thousands of other F/OSS apps) from the Windows "Add/remove programs -> Get new programs online" link, they must actually, by your logic, be DRM-crippled trialware! Well, now I know; thanks for educating me!
A quick Google gives: If you have Vista Business or Ultimate:
- From the start menu, type "Local Security Policy"
- Go to Local Policies -> Security Options
- In the right pane, scroll down to the bottom
- Double-click "User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation"
- Select "Disabled".
If you have Home Premium:- From the start menu, type regedit.exe
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows
- Edit -> New -> DWORD value
- Enter "SecureDesktop" and press Enter
- Set its value value to "0"
Doing this will turn UAC prompts into normal dialogue boxes: theoretically less secure than before, but there shouldn't really be any reason for malware writers to try take advantage of this since the number of people who will switch secure desktop off is hopefully small.(BTW: yes, for some unearthly reason the procedure is more complicated for the home versions than the pro versions. F***ing stupid, but there you go).
You're comment would be equally true if you substitue Windows for Ubuntu. You don't need to pay for Antivirus/Antispyware tools on Windows; you can use VMWare / VirtualPC whilst running Windows as your main OS.
I call bull. My mother's just bought a new laptop which has Intel "Graphics Media Accelerator" integrated graphics -- probably several orders of magnitude less powerful that your Radeon, and no dedicated graphics memory at all -- and it runs Aero perfectly smoothly.
Out of the 10 programs you mention, 9 are available for Windows. None require an "expensive single seat software license" because they're all free and open source. The only one that doesn't is Bluefish, and trust me there is no shortage of freeware HTML editors for Windows.
The only way I can think of your logic being in any way valid is if you have someone who has some moral objections to using open source apps; as if, just because they have bought Windows, they would now feel some sort of compulsion to not use free applications. Which is a load of crap. Using Windows doesn't force you to use only paid closed source apps any more than using a crystal glass forces you to only drink mineral rather than tap water.
Back in the real world, admittedly, no, when you first open "add/remove programs" it doesn't come up immediately with a list of thousands of programs you can install. In order to see that list, you need to click "Get new programs online" (which opens in your default web browser, not necessarily IE). Admittedly, clicking something is apparently an incredibly onerous task in Windows given the number of compaints about UAC we see here; but I'm not sure it in itself is enough to dismiss the feature entirely out of hand...
And yes, they have all the major open source apps for Windows there; including Openoffice, Firefox, and the GIMP.
- Click the "Get new programs online" link
- Click "Microsoft Office"
- Give Microsoft your credit card number.
If you prefer Openoffice:- Click the "Get new programs online" link
- Click the "Business & Office" category
- Scroll to "Openoffice"
- Click "Download now".
Really not difficult.