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richard
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Microsoft rolls out "Vista"
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Jan 30 18:21 UTC 2007 |
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| 203 responses total. |
richard
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response 1 of 203:
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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.
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nharmon
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response 2 of 203:
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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.
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nharmon
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response 3 of 203:
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Jan 30 19:11 UTC 2007 |
This response has been erased.
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twenex
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response 4 of 203:
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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.
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mynxcat
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response 5 of 203:
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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.
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cyklone
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response 6 of 203:
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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.
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mynxcat
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response 7 of 203:
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Jan 30 21:33 UTC 2007 |
Huh?
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cyklone
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response 8 of 203:
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Jan 30 21:48 UTC 2007 |
You snuck in, that was for richard.
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khamsun
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response 9 of 203:
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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.
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twenex
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response 10 of 203:
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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?
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vivekm1234
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response 11 of 203:
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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!
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mynxcat
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response 12 of 203:
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Jan 31 13:42 UTC 2007 |
I doubt it'll happen. Especially since Vista doesn't work well with a lot of
business applications.
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fudge
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response 13 of 203:
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Jan 31 15:08 UTC 2007 |
so, to sum it up:
- you can provide drivers during setup on media other than floppy (what? no
ftp, pxe, http...???) hmmm exciting
- have transparent windows, 3d flicking and funky effects. give up enough
power to run a decent desktop just for some annoying eye candy? hmm (tried
that sort of things in gnome and found them a waste of just about everything)
- can use usb sticks as virtual memory. oohh that's a clever way to kill flash
memory...that's ok it's cheap now....
- all the *really* funky stuff they were selling vista on has been left out...
- you have to sign off your arse and your soul
now, I've just last week started using XP (for work, and had the company get
me a laptop for it 'cos I refused to install on any of mine) and I'm not
impressed already. is there any *good* reason for one to switch???
ah btw, the email thingie, they've swapped out the html rendering engine from
IE in favour of that of Word. presumably to stop all the known exploits for
IE, but how much real-life usage has the word engine had on the 'net? how long
before it's taken apart?
I'll stick with Fedora. So far it's worked on everything out of the box, and
there's nothing in Windows that I've missed... well apart from the shockwave
plugin for my 6yo daughter's online games. Adobe! FFS!
FC6 already gives me more than Vista. By the time SP1 is out fixing all the
major fuckups, I'll be way ahead on FC7.
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richard
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response 14 of 203:
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Jan 31 15:52 UTC 2007 |
All Bill Gates really has to do to really push his new O/S systems is
to code the old ones to expire and require an upgrade after a set
number of years. He could force you to upgrade. If he wanted to.
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nharmon
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response 15 of 203:
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Jan 31 16:34 UTC 2007 |
> He could force you to upgrade.
No he couldn't.
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cross
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response 16 of 203:
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Jan 31 17:43 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #14; And then people would switch to Linux and it's like in droves.
The remaining usability issues would be quickly fixed (due to demand and
economic incentive) and Microsoft would be totally screwed.
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twenex
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response 17 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:02 UTC 2007 |
Re: #14
All Bill Gates really has to do to really push his new O/S systems is
to code the old ones to expire and require an upgrade after a set
number of years. He could force you to upgrade. If he wanted to.
No, all Bill Gates really has to do o really push his new OS systems is say
to the vendors "well, if you REALLY want to sell that nasty communist Linux
thing, maybe we'll just not supply you with Windows anymore!" - Just like he
has been doing for the last however-many years.
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nharmon
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response 18 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:07 UTC 2007 |
All Bill Gates has to do to push his new OS is make it cheap. Like, $20
cheap. Then there wouldn't be a reason NOT to buy it. Leave the business
versions priced at $150 to $200.
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twenex
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response 19 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:09 UTC 2007 |
So you'd sell your digital freedom for twenty dollars.
Thanks for the info.
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mynxcat
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response 20 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:17 UTC 2007 |
You guys can quibble all you want, but MS OSs are still the leading OSs
worldwide.
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nharmon
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response 21 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:20 UTC 2007 |
> So you'd sell your digital freedom for twenty dollars.
That doesn't even make sense. I wouldn't be selling anything.
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richard
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response 22 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:42 UTC 2007 |
Actually I was surprised the government never broke Microsoft up. Bill
Gates has a monopoly among PC's. Almost any PC computer you buy
anywhere in the world is going to have his software on it, his o/s and
his browser and his apps. The courts broke up AT&T years ago when you
basically had to have an AT&T phone to have a phone. But the same
rules don't apply to microsoft.
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twenex
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response 23 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:45 UTC 2007 |
Re: #20. Completely irrelevant, since they are foisted on most people. Most
people choose a PC supplier, but a lot of them don't even understand the
concept of "an OS", so of course they don't choose between them. Added to that
the fact that not only are suppliers who will sell you a computer pre-loaded
with anything but Windows (or MacOS) rare, but you would probably have to hold
the majority of them at gunpoint to get one without Windows on request.
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remmers
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response 24 of 203:
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Jan 31 18:48 UTC 2007 |
Re #22: You don't have to have a Windows computer to have a computer.
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