You are not logged in. Login Now
 0-12   13-37   38-62   63-87   88-112   113-137   138-162   163-187   188-203 
 
Author Message
richard
Microsoft rolls out "Vista" Mark Unseen   Jan 30 18:21 UTC 2007

This item has been erased.

203 responses total.
richard
response 1 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 18:22 UTC 2007

Last night I stopped by the big Compusa store on fifth avenue here 
in Manhattan where Microsoft was holding a roll-out party to mark the 
debut of its new O/S, Vista, which went on sale at midnight. I got to 
try a laptop with Vista on it and it has some nice new bells and 
whistles, and looks nice enough, but I was underwhelmed.  Microsoft has 
to have some good spindoctors just to push the idea that you 
necessarily need to upgrade your O/S everytime they put out a new 
version.  Yet some people buy into it.  There were in fact people lined 
up last night outside Compusa in the cold waiting for the strike of 
midnight so they could buy Vista and run home and stay up all night 
installing it.  Microsoft Geeks who think Bill Gates is god evidently. 
Word is Vista is not even compatible at this time with Ipod, which 
might have been news to not a few in line who I saw wearing Ipods.

Has anyone else seen Vista?  Even if I wanted a new microsoft O/S, 
which I don't, I didn't see much that told me this would have been 
worth the money.  

nharmon
response 2 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 19:10 UTC 2007

Microsoft Flight Simulator X, one of the most advanced Flight Simulation
games available does not run very well in Windows XP because it was
developed for DirectX 10. DirectX 10 is only available in Windows Vista.

I know quite a few people who were disappointed by FSX's performance
under XP and were eagerly waiting for the public release of Vista.

By the way, I've been playing with Vista since November when we received
our volume license codes and downloaded the ISOs. It's not spectacular,
but still a lot better than XP. One major feature I liked is that
storage drivers no longer need to be loaded on a floppy disk during the
OS load. There is a GUI installer and it will let you load the drivers
from a USB drive or CD.
nharmon
response 3 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 19:11 UTC 2007

This response has been erased.

twenex
response 4 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 21:24 UTC 2007

Re: #1. The consensus on Vista seems to be that it's a waste of time. Nice
for journalistic opinion to gel with reality where Windows is concerned, for
once.

In other news, Gates claims Vista is the most secure operating system ever
released.

Maybe he means it this time.
mynxcat
response 5 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 21:30 UTC 2007

It's secure in terms of parental controls. Heard it doesn't relly work woith
business applications like Siebel and SAP.
cyklone
response 6 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 21:31 UTC 2007

The piece I just read about Vista says you have to load iTunes and then your
iPod will do just fine.
mynxcat
response 7 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 21:33 UTC 2007

Huh?
cyklone
response 8 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 21:48 UTC 2007

You snuck in, that was for richard.
khamsun
response 9 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 22:25 UTC 2007

Re #1:

mostly agree with Re #2: Vista is nice, better than XP for users
spending time on graphic intensive stuff, and agree too with Re #4: a
waste of time if the goal is to get work done with a computer.
I played with Vista since beginning dec., was lazy and downloaded the
leaked MSDN dvd image from some binary news server.
It's better than XP and the Aero look can be pleasant, if you have a
recent hardware.A silly gadget is the 3D flipping windows.
Contrary to the requirements on the MS site, I got it to install on
533mhz+512ram and one can sill trim it down to a "classic" look
(95/NT/2K). The filesystem tree is different for the users (home
folders, documents and settings, ...) with stronger authorizations. But
the default conf. is very annoying, whatever network move you do and
installation of software, you get a warning window while the whole
desktop fades away, and the finding of the tuning parameter in the
control panel is cumbersome. The control panel is really a pain in the
ass to walk through. The Outlook Express replacement seems to be more
secure, but I guess it will catch as much virii as the previous
versions.The default IE7 setting keeps warning that internet is a wild
place, and it's just a rip-off of Firefox with a less intuitive main
bar. The needed disk space is insane because the mail/calendar stuff,
media player/moviemaker , all the desktop visuals and the huge drivers
base. Best is to install it, get vlite.net and re-author a tuned dvd
image. I know, people do not care because hard disk these days are 120
or 250 Gb, but I still find insane to waste space with junk.

The Vista default desktop is somewhat closer to the idea of something
like OSX, so for users allergic to the unix paradigm, I think it's
better, for the comfort and useability to get a Mac.

When I need to use Windows, I'm on NT4 or 2K.If I had to choose between
XP and Vista, I'll take the latter.

An important point: it's not possible to use Vista more than few weeks
without internet connection, because it keeps doing hand-shake
validation of the license with MS servers on a regular basis. Kind of:
you computer belongs to MS... (of course there's a hack, but non
trivial).

Verdict: interesting, but not worth the money for most users.Get a
pirate version to install and test drive.
twenex
response 10 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 30 23:57 UTC 2007

 An important point: it's not possible to use Vista more than few weeks
 without internet connection, because it keeps doing hand-shake
 validation of the license with MS servers on a regular basis. Kind of:
 you computer belongs to MS... (of course there's a hack, but non
 trivial).

Well that just ensures that not only will I never install a copy of Vista on
my machines, but I will also recommend to anyone who will listen that they
follow suit.

I can get a more pleasing (to my eyes) near-as-dammit-OSX-look on my KDE
desktop too. I don't get drop shadows or that silly rubik's cube thing, but
who wants them except to play around with for a few minutes?
vivekm1234
response 11 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 31 08:48 UTC 2007

Given that those bsrtds expect the premium crap to run on a 1Gig processor
with 1 GB RAM it's not likely i'll be updating my Win-2K any time soon.
I hate their lousy GUI and i sincerely hope that all software companies don't
start designing only Vista compatible software!
mynxcat
response 12 of 203: Mark Unseen   Jan 31 13:42 UTC 2007

I doubt it'll happen. Especially since Vista doesn't work well with a lot of
business applications.
 0-12   13-37   38-62   63-87   88-112   113-137   138-162   163-187   188-203 
Response Not Possible: You are Not Logged In
 

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss