Windows Vista and XP Head To Head 364
thefickler sends in an article comparing Windows Vista and Windows XP in the areas of security, home entertainment, GUI, parental controls, and networking. The author clearly believes that Vista wins across these categories.
Alternative Comparison: Minimal HW Configuration (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish to see a comparison for the benefit of millions of users who do not want to (or who cannot afford to) upgrade to new hardware. This comparison would involve installing Vista and XP on a hardware configuration that is the minimum configuration recommended for XP (yes, XP). To enhance the comparison, we should include RedHat Linux.
Re:Inquiring Minds Want To Know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Um, Mac OS X is copying Vista? What? Whoa. Wait. Lets read it slowly. Yep, "offering Vista like graphics for several years now." Wow. So, Apple saw these graphics years ago in Longhorn, and copied them? Really? Bad Apple. Bad.
Yeah. This is a Definitive Guide alright. Not. I've seen a lot better reviews on the net. Even by *gasp* CNET.
Re:Alternative Comparison: Minimal HW Configuratio (Score:4, Insightful)
So much for least-privledge. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes Friends, Microsoft Fails Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing Promise: Increased Security
Some Dude's Findings: VISTA: Vista has a similar but improved firewall to Windows XP SP2, but anyone who is serious about their security will still replace it with a third party firewall or Internet security suite.
Marketing Promise: Anti-phishing feature
Some Dude's Findings: Both score 'pretty terrible'
Marketing Promise: File system security
Some Dude's Findings: However pressing the 'ok' button lets you do whatever you want anyway, and experienced users will just be annoyed. What did I do? I turned it off completely and am not bothered by it anymore.
-That's increased security!
Marketing Promise: Easy
Some Dude's Findings: anyone, even without massive computing experience, can easily set up a wired or wireless network.
Utter security failure. Plenty of work fixing broken windows. Forced upgrade with new hardware sales. It's a win-win all around!
WTF? Is this an OS or a joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Randomization? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:i agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, add more crud to my OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care if my OS has 3D icons or fancy clear windows... I want it to be out of the way, and just RUN THE PROGRAMS I WANT! That's the whole point of the OS. Not to take up 4 gig of hard drive space because Grandma wants to print pictures of her grandchildren. Stop hogging all my system RAM and let me choose my preferred programs to look at pictures, play MP3s, and watch videos- none of which come with your OS.
Re:Please, add more crud to my OS! (Score:5, Insightful)
You assume that the way YOU want a computer is the way the rest of the world wants a computer. Likewise, you haven't even taken a moment to learn what XP or Vista can do for a power user, as demonstrated by your rant against features that can be turned off, easily changed, or accessed via command line.
Not surprising?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Erm... Yes, it is.
An operating system is supposed to provide the low-level core of functionality necessary to run (and if necessary co-ordinate) other programs. Such functionality can be and has been written to run on systems with 1/1000th the processing power of today's multicore monsters.
Of course, today the term "operating system" refers, at least in common usage, to some sort of bundle that includes a kernel, various support libraries for networking, GUI, and other such stuff, some sort of shell, a whole bunch of tools of varying degrees of usefulness, and a whole bunch of mostly half-baked and sub-standard applications. (This description applies, to my knowledge, to pretty much every major desktop "OS" currently available, from Windows to Linux distros via MacOS and various other UNIX platforms.)
My current PC is now about four years old, but was a pretty high spec at that time. On this system, I can happily run full-blown applications for everything from editing high-res photos to playing games that do real-time 3D graphics pretty reasonably. Given this information, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever that any operating system should not run very comfortably using a tiny fraction of my system's resources, no matter how many bells and whistles it has.
Now, according to Microsoft, my system just about meets the minimum standards to run the low-end versions of Vista, and isn't qualified to run the high-end versions for several reasons. I can only conclude from this that either Vista's code is poorly written and/or poorly organised, or that those higher-end versions of Vista are trying to do yet more things that are not really part of an operating system, and are probably better done by specialist standalone applications anyway. Either way, Vista is suffering from some serious bloat, and bloat means bugs, security flaws, performance problems and all the rest.
So yes, even if it's a brand new OS, it's still of concern that it requires such impressive hardware specs to run well. In fact, it's a pretty damning indictment of the product, and doesn't so much imply as outright prove that it's going in the wrong direction.
Re:i agree (Score:5, Insightful)
xp does seem speedier, but other than that, vista rocks. it's stable, great to look at, and easy to use
Stable is good; I find XP pretty stable too. But if "great to looks at means" it's slower than XP, I'm not interested. I either use my comptuer for work, in which case I want it fast, or for games, in which case I want an OS that takes as few system resources as possib.e
the administrator account is turned off by default
I'd count this as a non-issue. It's perfectly possible to make a non-admin account for most stuf under Windows XP too.
defrags are set up on a weekly schedule by default
Of course, this totally ignores the argument that defrags should rarely be necessary - certainly not once a week! - on "modern" filesystems (which appears to include just about every filesystem not invented by Microsoft).
searching is blazing on indexed drives
Ditto for Windows XP if you actually turn on the indexing service.
Just about everything else is "spit 'n polish". It's true, this important for end users, and it's something that a lot of open source projects are often criticized for. But to me, this is far from a compelling reason to upgrade. If that were it, I'd say it tips the scales slightly in favour of upgrading. But then you have to balance these few nicities (most of which are possible with XP - the previous generation OS - with a little bit of configuration effort) against the massive increase in hardware requirements and draconian DRM. What it boils down to is that the "message" in every review I've seen of Windows Vista is basically that it does everything that Windows XP does, looks nicer, has higher hardware requirements, and imposes more restrictions on what you can do with your media. Is that it? Honestly, have I missed something? What's with all the hype?
Re:Inquiring Minds Want To Know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the whole paragraph--to put it in more context:
It never states that OS X copied Vista, simply that the graphical user interface used in Vista has a likeness to OS X--which has been around for several years.
Anyway, I think any Vista guide is going to have a certain slant one way or the other. Either some Linux/Mac guru is going to come out bashing Vista for everything that it's "stolen" and the minimum system requirements or some Microsoft fanboy is going to claim how wonderful it is and how justified the upgrade is to run such a purdy OS.
Re:Randomization? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh well... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternative Comparison: Minimal HW Configuratio (Score:4, Insightful)
And I personally still say the same thing about XP's requirements. And ESPECIALLY about Vista's. Note that "minimum" requirements mean, in my experience, that sure, you could run it, but could you possibly want to? Sure, any computer less than about four years old probably CAN run Vista (though it may require a memory upgrade - many computers still only came with 256 until maybe a year or two ago). But would you want to? I personally have run Windows 2000 on relatively ancient machines - 400 or so MHz processors, I think 64M of RAM, and so on - and I think they're still running, somehow - but don't wish to repeat the experience. However they could run, was the primary point. Why can't Vista come even close to that? It's not the interface - it can still fall back to classic mode or whatever it is they call it now. There is no excuse for that requiring any more than a simple VGA-capable graphics card, either. Remember "Safe Mode"? Why can't it cut back so that all it's really running is a simple firewall (though without all the frivolous services, that shouldn't be necessary if the few that are system-critical are written properly) and whatever the user has started, let's say Internet Explorer and an old version of Word (again, requirements)? My parents own a computer that has been running Windows 98, with Office 97, for nearly 9 years now. It could use an upgrade to Win2k, certainly, but why not something with some obvious security features that earlier versions of Windows irresponsibly neglected, like the default non-privileged user in Vista?
I don't want to make this thread even more off-topic, but I think that Microsoft should consider how Linux handles this (though it's probably too late to implement it): abstract everything. Got a computer that can't handle the newest version of, say, KDE or Gnome? Fine, try XFCE. Or Fluxbox, or... Same underlying code to draw stuff. With AIGLX and nVidia's AIGLX-type extensions, even Compiz and Beryl (think Aero Glass with more toys) don't need separate code. Can't handle Aero Glass? Fine, try Aero. Can't handle Aero? Try Classic mode. Miracle that your computer still runs at all? Disable some eye candy in Classic. And frankly, if the GUI in its most stripped-down form can't run on the same spec hardware that runs Windows 98 perfectly, maybe the code needs to be cleaned up. I'm not a software engineer, I just yell at bad ones. Look, the OS I run can run a box that acts as a home router on hardware that costs literally $20 US. Vista can't even be bought for that much money. And the hardware it requires (at a minimum) runs probably $80 used. Why bother even including ICS anymore?
ROFL (Score:3, Insightful)
Another feature stolen from the Mac. Of course a lot of people have never used Macs (pity on them), so they'll never know that a ton of other things that Microsoft has "innovated" in Vista existed (sometimes for decades!) on the Mac.
>> searching is blazing on indexed drives
Compared to what? I find Vista built in search to be utterly lacking compared to, say, Copernic (PC) or Spotlight (on the Mac). I mean, they can't even rip off Spotlight properly. If you're going to offer "search as you type" thing, you better implement it in a way that makes it responsive. The one in Vista chokes immediately after you start typing. And then you sit there and wait for results.
Re:Inquiring Minds Want To Know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It better. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Inquiring Minds Want To Know... (Score:0, Insightful)
Gaming? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It better. (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't that many years ago people were saying the same thing about XP as compared to Win98. Every new version of Windows is considered bloated compared to the previous one.
Re:Randomization? (Score:5, Insightful)
*sighs* This is becoming my slashdot pet peeve.
I usually like your posts, and I agree with you even right now -- but my god, why did you have to be such an asshole about it? You used 62 words to make your point (and hell, that's including the 17 words in your semi-insult opening sentence) and 162 words to berate the poster, the moderators and fellow slashdotters. Something is very wrong with that picture.
You're right about one thing: If I had mod points, you would absolutely have gotten a flamebait mod--and it would have had nothing to do with saying that not all security flaws can be prevented. If you're upset about how many flamebait mods you get, perhaps you should try not coming off as a smug prick when you post. If 3/4ths of your post is a flame you deserve a flame mod. It doesn't matter what the hell the other quarter is.
Re:i agree (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Quite simply, no. You expect MS to lock them out for a faulty component that had to be replaced several times? No. Nor will they give you crap about upgrading several times in the next few years. It simply doesn't make sense. Microsoft would lose an insane number of paying customers - I for one would refuse to buy any more operating systems from them. That and it'd be plain abusive to their customers; no company with a bit of brains behind it would consider something so silly. (Yes, yes, let's hear the "haha, MS doesn't have any brains!" jokes...)
Just be logical. They wouldn't do that.
So? (Score:1, Insightful)
Everybody did it with all previous versions of Microsoft's operating systems (with the possible exception of WinME), and I can't think why they won't just as quickly bend over and grease up for the salesmen with regard to Vista.
Give it a rest, ditch the transparent and childish denial. History and precedent have spoken: it simply doesn't matter if Vista completely and utterly sucks, everybody is still going to try and get it ASAP.
All you people claiming that nobody will "bother" with Vista when you know the opposite is true, and that you will probably be near the front of the line one night outside yout local PC store.
Re:Not surprising?! (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't make any sense. The more bells and whistles you throw in, the more power you will need to run the OS - by definition. Look at games for example. Modern games look a hell of a lot better than games that were made 5-10 years ago. Do they require the same minimum hardware? Hell no. Should they? Of course not.
Of course, it's another argument entirely if all the bells and whistles are worth it. The graphical improvements made in games have still resulted in some pretty terrible games. So, it's not a question of whether Vista should run with all the bells and whistles on 10 year old hardware (I'm not arguing that Vista is optimized by the way) - it's whether the hardware to run Vista with all the bells and whistles is worth it.
Is Vista $751 better than XP? (Score:5, Insightful)
Prices here: http://www.apcstart.com/node/4035 [apcstart.com]
Re:It better. (Score:5, Insightful)
All other feature reasons aside, that's a compelling reason for Microsoft to demand more CPU and bandwidth in your hardware to run Vista.
Re:Not surprising?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh well... (Score:3, Insightful)
The anti-trust fire is simply a cost of doing a highly profitable business for them: they've successfully stalled such cases to death for years now. They're trying to do it even more now with so-called Trusted Computing, to block other software installations and especially software access to CD and DVD drives, and they tried it with their WinFS filesystem which was burdened with a Microsoft patented XML basis, and fortunately seems to have died like the dog it was.
Re:What's with all these Vista news these days? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well then, (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the sentiment -- toolbars are evil. However, there are some toolbars that are trustworthy. Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are the immediate examples that come to mind, and you only need one of those. I wouldn't install any others unless I was intimately familiar with them (either written by me, or open source so that I can inspect the code and make my own changes if I so desire).
The thing I don't really get is why toolbars are so pervasive. IE has an extensibility model just like Firefox and you can add quite a few nice features without having to expose a toolbar. For example, I wrote myself a pop-up blocker for IE as a non-toolbar BHO something like 6 years ago. Now you can't get a pop-up blocker without also getting a space-consuming toolbar in the process, and the pop-up blocking functionality on the toolbar is disabled if the toolbar isn't visible -- that's just dumb. Firefox has a rich add-on community that doesn't revolve around toolbars. IE could have the same type of community, but unfortunately everything useful seems to be a toolbar these days even if there's no reason to implement it that way.
Re:Not surprising?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes Friends, Microsoft Fails Again (Score:3, Insightful)
The firewall in Vista has been much improved for GPO configuration, and this means that the rollout in a company is much easier. There simply is no need to use third party firewalls in XP SP2 OR Vista. Of course, many "power users" which only work on their own machine don't see this.
Anti-Phishing is like Anti-Spam. It doesn't work, as it is not a solution to the problem, but a workaround. We will get a simple arms race here, and the problem will persist. There's a feature in IE7 which will allow the addressbar to turn green with certain SSL certificates (which probably are going to be very expensive). That sounds more like a solution, but it remains to be seen if users are able to grasp this.
I've been using UAC on my desktop machine at work since early betas. Of course, it bothers you often when you're "working on the system" as opposed to "working". What i would like to see is UAC caching (i.E. UAC gives admin rights automatically for five minutes, or something), but this would severe security implications (but sudo does the same thing). UAC does not bother anyway when they're working (on the ERP system, in Office, cutting videos, etc.)
UAC allows me to strip users of legacy applications of their admin rights, while they will still be able to install programs and some such. I've reconfigured UAC by group policy to always ask for credentials, this behavior imitates sudo and it's a very nice warning that you're changing something inherent to the system.
Users don't buy new operating systems, they buy new computers.
Enterprises don't buy new computers, they will roll out new operating systems when the paid support for the old one gets too expensive (lots of companies still running 2000...)
Re:wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It better. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:i agree (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising?! (Score:2, Insightful)
Although your statement is correct, you're missing the point here. If you compare Vista with (e.g) OS X or a modern Linux system with XGL, you'll see that Vista's hardware requirements are atleast 50% higher for the exact same features, which are IMHO also less useful in Vista. OS X on a G4 iBook (1.5Ghz) with a measly Radeon 7500 and 512MB RAM works perfectly smooth with literally all bells and whistles enabled. Including Aero/Expose/Spotlight/dashboard/etc/etc (you know, all the stuff that's supposed to be 'new' in Vista). Compare that to Vista's minimum requirements.
Also the 'Apple charges for minor updates' argument annoys me. Apple *does not* charge for minor updates. I have Tiger running on both of my Apple machines, and both have been updated from 10.4.2 to 10.4.8 without any additional costs. And these updates include far more than just bug fixes/security updates. Is it really THAT hard to forget OS X's versioning scheme for a second when talking about OS upgrades?? I mean, I know 10.5.1 will not look like a major upgrade from 10.4.8, but checking Leopards improvements over Tiger, it adds *more* features than Vista adds over XP. Also, Apple releases major updates every 1.5 year or so (compared to 5 years for Vista), and charge less for it ($129 for Leopard IIRC, compared to $249 for Vista Ultimate). The only real update XP ever got was XP2, which just added loads of workarounds to fix all the gaping security holes in it. No new features there...
Re:i agree (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I really the only person who think translucent windows look *SHIT*? Not just a bit annoying, but truly *SHIT*. I've been viewing loads of screenshots (haven't actually installed it) trying to like them, but I just don't get the hype. I think they looks ugly and retarded; I don't want background crud coming through to mess up the windows on top. Although ribbons seem to look nice, the rest of the 'visual upgrades' are very tenuous.
Re:Well then, (Score:2, Insightful)
Oddly enough, I work at company that makes embedded systems, and I know of at least one bug report where the installing our SDK fails if you have Google toolbar installed. Even stranger, I debugged a problem with the emulated version running on Windows. Customer code did something quite reasonable, but the emulator crashed inside a DLL from a trojan, which had installed a bunch of hooks and then crashed handling a message. Unbelievable, I figured all largish corporations run IE/Windows in a ultra locked down mode so they didn't get these sorts of issues.
These days, I regard any toolbar or commercial media player as a stability risk.
Performance? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Not surprising?! (Score:3, Insightful)
C++ is, by design, a language with a zero-overhead philosophy: if you don't use the extra features it offers over C, you shouldn't have to pay for them. Of course, not all implementations of C++ or its standard libraries are smart, but seriously, my hello world in compiled C++ is about the same size as my hello world in compiled C. Both are way larger than my hello world in assembly language, which comes in at 26 bytes; perhaps we should give up using any sort of higher-level programming language altogether and code in assembly instead?
I think you were trying to make a valid point about C++ libraries, many of which really are of very poor quality and completely bloated. Microsoft's own MFC is infamous as an example of poor design that happened to be in the right place at the right time, and the trend for "application frameworks" and "rapid application development" isn't helping. But that's not C++'s fault, it's because these things give businesses that don't care about bloat what they want.
Re:Alternative Comparison: Minimal HW Configuratio (Score:3, Insightful)
That really depends on how you define average doesn't. Your average gamer has a 3500+ 64. Your average grandparent has a PIII with 256MB. Your average housewife might have a P4 2.4 with 512MB. I agree with the original point. The benchmark of Vista was with the really high end hardware. Not high end compared to new hardware but high end compared to what most people run. To run Vista and get the features, people will have some serious upgrading to do or they will have to replace their computer. Even then, they cannot get the basic model. They will have to up for a higher end model.
Re:It better. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inquiring Minds Want To Know... (Score:1, Insightful)
Network: ok, tie... BTW, tie 10 half open limit is on XP also, and no, it doesn't affect my torrents.
Gaming: Wow, you're so wrong it's not even funny - sounding like a linux zealot. You *CAN* get high-def without HDCP. Who cares if DX9 games run in emulation mode? As long as they run fine, what's the problem? It's been that way for older DirectX versions for ages. The part about tossing your DX9 games is a blatant lie (not surprising coming from you). The only benchmark I've seen that supported that 15% slower in games was using a RC, with beta drivers, DX9 emulated (not native DX10) - DX9L not being out yet, and such things. RTM with optimized drivers and such just might make it FASTER than XP. AGain, facts matter very little to people like you...
But on slashdot, you get modded up for BS and lies like this when it bashes teh M$... Gaming on linux? HA HA HA - good one!
Without a Toolbar, Who would Know? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rule 2: If it's not a toolbar, the user won't be able to operate it.
Now, mostly those rules are facetious... but they both hold a grain of truth. Users look at the toolbar at the top when they want to do things. Most don't click menus. Most don't realize that buttons in the status bar can be clickable. The only active part of the screen as far as they're concerned are the buttons in the toolbar.
And most users really don't know the software they have on their computer unless their computer tells them, very visibly, over and over. I'd say the percentage of adult users that can use an application that's not in the toolbar, without assistance or training, is under 20%. There are a LOT of clueless adult Internet users out there, they're the majority now, and they're a HUGE market.
That's why software makers do Toolbars, they want that market.
Raven
Re:Do I want those bells & whistles? (Score:3, Insightful)
I use my computer as a Digital Audio Workstation. It would amaze you how quickly I can get to my computer's performance limit when recording a live instrument while playing back half-a-dozen virtual synths with effect plug-ins. I admit that I'll run into the data throughput bottleneck before I get to the processor's limit, but the last thing I want is a brand-new, updated operating system that uses up a lot more resources than the one I'm currently using.
It's not even so much the hundreds that it will cost me to buy new hardware so that Vista will run my programs at the same performance level as XP Pro. What really bugs me is that Microsoft can't make it easier for me to run my operating system with minimal bells and whistles so I can get the best performance possible out of my apps. After all, I spend very little time admiring the beauty of my OS. I usually just start an application and then that's what I see, not the START button or task bar. Call me crazy but that's just the kind of hairpin I am.
Re:why are so many slashdotters insolent pricks? (Score:2, Insightful)
But that's a side-issue - the main point is that DRM quite frequently stops not only illegal uses of media, but also legal uses - and it certainly allows for companies to dictate what legal uses are, in ways that I really don't think they should be allowed to.