Mossberg - Vista Is Worthy, Largely Unexciting 398
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walter S. Mossberg says Vista is the best version of Windows yet, but doesn't represent a major step forward: 'Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP.' More from the review: 'Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple's operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. ... in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers. Also, despite Vista's claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Microsoft has thrown in one such program free, but you will have to buy at least one more. That means that, while Vista has eased some of the burden on users imposed by the Windows security crisis, it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote.'"
Downloadable (Score:5, Informative)
I guess many here are not planning to buy it, but anyway, this is something new from Microsoft. I guess they are really happy with their Genuine Advantage to go through with this.
Re:My 2c (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it..... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:My 2c (Score:3, Informative)
DVD, Mail, Calendar, Addressbook, Fax & Scan.
Windows Imaging Component sounds identical to Core Image
Re:Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it..... (Score:5, Informative)
Correct. In 2001, there wasn't much there. By 2002 [10.2], it was pretty good. Stuff just worked, so Vista was only bested by 5 years, or almost 2 years if you count the current features in OS X mimicked by Vista in their unique, crudely inferior way.
Re:He likes it, but doesnt want to say he likes it (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever felt that sometimes people go out of their way to put down Microsoft.
No, I feel that the reviewer was expecting more from 5 years of development, and not to be burdened by hefty hardware requirements to take advantage of the new improvements. He compares it to OS X because it's gotten steadily better over the past 5 years, where the offerings from Microsoft, a much larger and richer company isn't really worthy of 5 years of development efforts.
Really I think the article sounds quite honest. He mentions that there's some improvements, but the majority of people don't have the hardware to take advantage of the improvements. The average guy is wondering "Should I upgrade to Vista?" not "Does this guy like Vista or not?" The article essentially say that unless you have a gig or more of memory, a recent computer, and a fast graphics processor.. Vista doesn't provide any benefits worth upgrading for.
Ultimately I think it indicates a larger problem at Microsoft. It's been more than 5 years since XP, the last desktop OS from Microsoft. That's pretty horrible considering that previously Microsoft has released a new desktop OS every about every 2 or 2.5 years (3.1 in 92, 3.11 in 93, 95 in 95, 98 in 98, 98 SE in 99, ME in 2000, WT2K in 2000, XP in 2001).
Look at all the major changes in previous 5 year spans. Compare Windows 3.11 in 93 to Windows 98 in 98, or Windows 95 in 95 to Windows 2000 in 2000 and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hell, compare the initial (really awfull) release of OSX 10.0 to the decent release of 10.4 only 4 years later. Sure there's a lot more to improve in OS X since it was so totally new.. but the fact that Apple can pull off more in less time doesn't speak well for Microsoft.
Re:best windows evar? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"...what is so fantastic in WV?" (Score:4, Informative)
Gates didn't get into what could replace DRM, but he did give some reasonably candid insights suggesting that he thinks DRM is as lame as the rest of us. Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which "causes too much pain for legitmate buyers" while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are "huge problems" with DRM, he says, and "we need more flexible models, such as the ability to "buy an artist out for life" (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.
His short term advice: "People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then."
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/14/bill-gates-o
STOP THE FUD (Score:5, Informative)
Aero Glass requires DirectX 9 hardware. Any low or midrange standalone card released in the last couple of years will work. Hell, even GeForce FX 5200 cards work. Even most integrated video works, including Intel's GMA950, ATI's Radeon Xpress, and NVIDIA's GeForce 6100. My $50 Athlon 64 motherboard has integrated video that works. HP's $269 desktop has video that works.
Does Vista require more memory? Absolutely - you want 512M at a minimum, preferably 1GB. Does it require more CPU? A bit more.
These are not high requirements. The cheapest system sold at Best Buy can run Vista with Aero Glass. Yes, that's right - the eMachines T3516, with its 3.2GHz Celeron D, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics, and 512M of memory will run Vista just fine.
So much for "hefty" hardware.
Re:Issues of trust... (Score:5, Informative)
It looks to me that when creating Vista, Microsoft must have spent most of their time and energy on the new Windows Vista Content Protection. It is such an amazingly complicated system, that I can easily see why see why it would have taken Microsoft 5 years to create Vista. Most other new features that Microsoft had originally announced would be part of Vista were dropped, along the way, most likely because creating the protected environment for DRM was a difficult enough task by itself.
In Vista, many of the core operating system elements have been extensively reworked in order to provide DRM content protection. Vista goes to great extremes to block the owner of the computer from gaining access to unprotected content in any possible way either in the software or the hardware itself. One example is the extreme measures taken to make sure that computer owners can not access unencrypted content on a user accessible bus. To prevent that, they plan to use 128-bit encryption on the fly at high bandwidth. I don't understand most of the details, but apparently it partly involves keeping the content encrypted as it goes from one hardware component to another. Vista is so insanely paranoid that that it also goes out about 30 times per second polling hardware to try and catch anyone playing games with any component. The system is so incredibly complicated that I don't plan to ever try to understand how it all works.
I also wonder what effect all the extra overhead required for various components will have on hardware requirements. It sounds to me like Windows Vista itself largely was designed to be a secure DRM delivery system that Hollywood and the music industry can trust. Apparently for some reason, Microsoft did not show the same level of effort and paranoia in making Vista computers secure? Apparently protecting user's privacy is not as important. Below are three articles that are critical of the effect that the various new Windows Vista DRM features might have on hardware requirements. At the top of the first two articles there are also links to mp3 versions that are also available. The last article has already been discussed on Slashdot recently.
Re:Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it..... (Score:3, Informative)
Yup, I haven't had any problems with Steam/Counterstrike, etc. I also play World of Warcraft on the PC side since Ventrillo isn't working correctly or isn't available on OS X from what I hear. The only problems I've had so far are:
1. The mighty mouse sucks for gaming.
2. Certain buttons aren't on the mac keyboard (like print screen) and the equivlents (f15?) don't get regonized with stuff. This isn't a big deal, you just have to rebind them to something else.
3. My iMac came with 3 dead pixels on the screen. Again, this isn't a big deal, but apple doesn't take them back unless you have 5. If you get a cinema display, I've never seen dead pixels on those so I don't think it is an issue there.
4. If you duel boot XP with boot camp, you can't use the same copy of XP with Parellels (emulation inside of OS-X). You could probably clear that up with a call to microsoft though.
Despite the above nitpicking, being able to boot into OS-X makes up for the few problems.
Also if you buy a Mac, load up on the ram (I got 2GB, it worked out well) but don't go up to 3GB [slashdot.org]. There is some kind of issue with nVidia cards addressing large amounts of memory on the mac.
Re:"...what is so fantastic in WV?" (Score:3, Informative)
Re:STOP THE FUD (Score:2, Informative)