Windows Vista To Come In 7 Flavors 815
Dionne writes "Microsoft is really milking it with this one: According to an Ars Technica report, there will be 7 versions of Windows Vista: Starter Edition, Home Basic Edition, Home Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small
Business Edition, Enterprise Edition, and Ultimate Edition." From the article: "Windows Vista Ultimate Edition is a superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition, so it includes all of the features of both of those product versions, plus adds Game Performance Tweaker with integrated gaming experiences, a Podcast creation utility (under consideration, may be cut from product), and online "Club" services (exclusive access to music, movies, services and preferred customer care) and other offerings (also under consideration, may be cut from product)."
'Ultimate' Edition (Score:5, Interesting)
What are the odds that you'll be able to 'upgrade' from one version to the other by changing one registry key? [theregister.co.uk]
Seems like a load of arse to me. (Score:5, Interesting)
Still - I'm not worried - it looks like England will win the Test, and I run Linux, so all is well.
Every other OS is easier to buy(or simply:select)? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember there was a company that had an ad [man.ac.uk] complaining how Linux came in too many "mutations" (the basis of evolution BTW)?
just wondering... (Score:2, Interesting)
The only version that will matter... (Score:2, Interesting)
As a side note, I installed SuSe 10.0 RC1 yesterday on a brand new Dell Latitude D810 and had everything but the NVidia driver working in short order. Slight problem with the firmware binary package for the Centrino WLAN card not being installed, but other than that pretty smooth. I tried SUPER SuSe first and though it had the same WLAN problem it was faster than hell. Much more responsive. Would be nice to be able to search through packages available on the install CD, post install. Also, the wrong kernel-sources packages was included with the RC1 version. I posted the few bugs I noticed.
Look out Microsoft. New Linux distros are at about the Windows 2000 level of ease of use and catching up quickly.
Oh, I get it... (Score:1, Interesting)
That leaves the Home Editions. Hmmm... OS X before you install the developers tools?
hell yes. (Score:5, Interesting)
There's eight different servers (a test bed), just about all of them have to be treated in some special way (iis5 exports stuff differently than iis6, forcing me to write my parser *twice* to make things work right.
Even better, sometimes different service packs change things around in undocumented ways, forcing me to once again re-write individual scripts to take that into account.
Eight boxes, two versions of Microsoft operating systems, two service packs and I have five(!) different scripts to handle it all and make it work.
Where Do You Want To Go Today, indeed.
Why do you run your site on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://uptime.netcraft.net/up/graph?site=www.winv
Is Windows, be it Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server, unable to cope with the minor loads your site receives?
Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
3 applications? That that include background utilities like virus scanner and firewall? What about IM? So I have AVG, Zonealarm and Trillian running (did I pick the right ones? those are the current choices on
Re:Why do you run your site on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
We use the operating system that is the best for the job. I use Windows at home for some things. My notebook (which goes with me just about everywhere, including work) runs Linux. Maybe this guy just doesn't think that Windows is that hot for servers, but is more than capable as a workstation? Life isn't black and white, you know.
Re:'Ultimate' Edition (Score:5, Interesting)
Google OS (Score:2, Interesting)
Over here.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of users who don't know nothing of OSes, buy it thinking it is XP and they realize that once they already bought them.
I'm not sure if this is good or bad, more like a Shing Yang.
PC vendors lower their costs that way, but they don't inform the user about the OS installed.
Users realize they don't have XP when they try to do something that they used to, or when they try to download MSN. Then, the general line of thinking is "I can't get anything done with Linux, Linux suck" and they get a pirated copy of XP.
Back to the topic, it's clear that MS don't want to let Linux reach the user. They will encourage PC vendors to sell the Vista version that only boots on odd days and let's you hit the start button once per session. That way they get ahead with this problem.
Linux has a chance NOW. Linux is actually reaching the user NOW, but fails to demonstrate that it is actually good for the common tasks that the user does.
I'm not saying that something can't be done with Linux. The problem is that the user simply doesn't realize that yet and they get rid of Linux before they have a chance to do so.
Re:Too many targets (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I actually remember back when home computers were new....and actually called home computers (or, sometimes, microcomputers). Back then every computer brand was utterly different, different OS, different base language, often a different processor. It was chaos and it was glorious. There were a massive amount of computer systems to choose from, from extremely light, low end, cheap systems like the Timex-Sinclair 1000, to the mid-range C-64, to the expensive IBM PC. All were different. All had a wealth of software avaliable for them. Developers wrote software for their chosen machines, their chosen OS, but often they wrote completely different versions of the same software for multiple types of machines (Visicalc was a good example of this). Nobody complained to my knowledge.
Too many people have grown up in a monopolist, monoculture society, they think computing has to be that way and always has been.
As for the different distributions of Linux....yes, they are different distributions of Linux, but they are not really different "distributions" of the same OS. Essentially they are different operating systems, each built around GNU and the Linux kernel. Do we call OS X a "distribution" of BSD? No, not really, it's a unique OS qith it's own quirks, and it's own top layer, and it's customised. Linux distros are no different. Most take GNU and the Linux kernel, and add a top layer of their own. That top layer may itelf be just mildly customised versions of the "standard" along with a few custom libraries and integrated applications (Mandriva, SuSE, etc...) or it may be more radical (GNUStep). Sometimes, they are even proprietary (Linspire). And they all usually customise the kernel to suit their needs, so between them even the kernel is different. They are all different competing operating systems, based around the same standards and low level components, rather than different "versions" of the same OS. For that, you need to look at the different versions within the same distro.
Re:They left out.. (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
One final note worth mentioning is that this strategy does remove the "corporate Windows XP" option from the hands of pirates. Volume licensing for Pro, SBE, and EE may still mean that there will be copies of Windows Vista out there that don't "call home" for Windows Product Activation, but as you can see, Microsoft has removed most of the features that most pirates would want from those OSes. You won't see corporate licensing versions of Ultimate Edition.
So, no volume licences for versions with all the fancy multimedia bells and whistles (HDTV, DVD authoring, DVD ripping, etc). They seem to figure potential pirates would want these features and businesses will not. Though speaking as someone who has worked in a school's IT department I can say there's at least one environment that may well want features like that but still has enough installs to do to make per machine activiation impractical.
Release 2 (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hey Mr. Comedian - enough with BSOD (Score:1, Interesting)
I've isntalled XP hundreds and hundreds of times (53 THOUSAND copies are deployed at work too), and it doesn't ever BSOD, if it's not for bad RAM (test with memtest86+) or shitty drivers for truly ghetto hardware (which I don't even get to see once a year).
Our previous OS (2k) hardly ever BSOD'ed either - most often it was either bad RAM or a loose power cable on a HD (inaccessible_boot_device BSOD).
So you ARE just trolling. How surprising!
Sorry, but not true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Suse: The default installation hanged (sorry, don't remember what point). But I remember you could hit a button (I think F2) for an options menu. I remember the choices there were highly technical, which is to be expected of course since I'm starting to dink around. But I randomly guessed fer-the-helluvit and because I had no idea what I was doing (and I already consider myself slightly more knowledgeable than most computer users--at least I have a certificate in Comp Sci from SFU!) Anyway, I chose Custom (I think it was), and that's when excitement finally happened: it started blitzing through hardware detection, and my joy was great indeed. Then, it gave an error message, and I was booted to a linux prompt (bash I think it's called?). All I knew what to do was type -ls (yes, laugh, I'm a total linux noob). So I did. After doing that four or five times more, the novelty was gone and I tried to go online and find out what to do (there's got to be something wrong). I found out I'm supposed to type 'StartX' or something like that. I tried it, but it said there was something wrong with my video mode (wasn't supported, it explicitly said). So I
quit and tried the recently discussed Freespire edition of Linspire.
My Freespire installation seemed to go smoothly until I was presented with a login and password scenario. I thought maybe I had downloaded the wrong thing. As determined as I was, I went online to checkout what to do, and was taught I was supposed to enter "root" and login and something else as password (don't remember anymore). To be honest, I don't remember what happened after that, but it was enough to make me give up.
To be honest, I may have mixed the 2 problems up above because I don't remember exactly which errors happened to which (I know, just a week ago). The entire testing period was just a time of frustration for me. I even tried to get some of the basics online, and was baffled to be told that, while windows letters the drives, linux makes primary, secondary, etc. drives with names like '/hdav1" and "/ndev4" or some gibberish (to me) like that. And the counting would skip numbers sometimes, I believe?
The problem with your assertion is that linux is only easy to install if you're already familiar with it. But perhaps EASY TO USE should be defined to mean EASY TO LEARN HOW TO USE. Under this definition, I'm sorry my friend, but linux is therefore not easy to use.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I had to do basic research about which distros to use ("DON'T use Debian, it's not for noobs like you!", "omg installations a breeze: just make and mount drives, or make and compile, etc." -- um.. what is this "mount" thing you speak of? "how the hell do I compile an operating system itself?" etc.)
Oh yeah. For those who still give a shit, I also tried Debian, just becuase I remember reading that notebooks are not supported very well, and since Debian is supposed to be the pro's choice and the most tweakable, I figured it might have the mighty powers to save me. It might, but I'll maybe never be able to find out. It'd take me weeks just to learn everything in the introductory pages. Mother of god, like I don't already have enough stuff to read (MA in English). I guess it'd be ok if that was your passion and hobby (playing with computers is a minor passion and hobby for me), but for most people, I doubt they'd even bother googling for basic help the moment something went wrong.
os-tan (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Hey Mr. Comedian - enough with BSOD (Score:2, Interesting)
NTFS: Windows happened to manage to fuckup its MFTs on its own and couldn't repair the problem. I had to transfer all my files to another computer and then reformat/restore the setup (using a WinPE) again because the shitty chkdsk couldn't/didn't work.
ACPI: Windows didn't like how long my ACPIEC was taking to respond so it would occationally BSoD. This was not a hardware issue, downgrading my bios version corrected this issue.
These two problems *** WERE NOT PROBLEMS IN ANY OTHER OPERATING SYSTEM ***, only microsoft.
I've done plenty of hardware probing on my system and all devices report that they are working properly.
Your bullshit comment about 99% of hardware instability caused by those reasons are NOT true. Only people who tweak their systems will get oc issues. Faulty memory sometimes is the cause, but is NOT the main problem. Overheating? Bullshit. Most systems aren't ricer systems. They often run well under max-specs for temp and yet they become problematic ONLY UNDER WINDOWS.
Please find me an official windows cd that can run most of anyone's hardware without any 3rd party drivers installed.
With me:
Windows: 12 nonfunctional devices.
Linux: 1 nonfunctional device (webcam).
Don't even bother saying "Well, it's cause your distro of linux is newer than windows xp", maybe it is, but with all the patching that windows has, there is no excuse for the lack of default hardware support.
Take your bitching somewhere else. Just because you didn't have problems with windows doesn't mean that everyone else is in the same boat as you are.