Information Technology Pros Debate Windows Vista 377
An anonymous reader writes "As a follow-on to John Welch's widely read review arguing that Mac OS X is superior to Vista, Information Week is running the first in a weeklong series of roundtables where a programmer, networking consultant, and 3 IT managers have a serious technical debate on the pros and cons of Vista. What's been your experience with Vista? More importantly, do you think it will ever gain traction among corporate users, or is its glitzy Aero interface destined to make it mainly a consumer OS?"
Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
That's not the entire story though. You see, I used to do OS/2 tech support back in the days. I got pretty familiar with the guts of OS/2 and Windows and OS/2 share a lot of early design. And early design flaws. In my opinion the most frustrating one of these is the fact that the application itself handles window frame messages. That means if the application is poorly written and stops handling frame window commands at any point you can't even minimize the window until it gets done processing. Minimize, kill and move should pretty much never stop working for any given window, even if the application is displaying a goddamn modal dialog box (Another pet peeve of mine and Microsoft seems to encourage programming by modal dialog.)
Meanwhile OSX and E17 demonstrate that you can put a glitzy interface on an OS that's quite suitable for server purposes. I'm pretty sure the only way that Microsoft could design an OS that didn't suck would be to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, though.
Re:As an IT manager (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Im sorry.... (Score:5, Informative)
"cache"
Vista will pre-load stuff it thinks you might need next. It's using your RAM to speed up your computer, which shockingly, is the idea of RAM.
Genius idea if you ask me; and I believe UNIX has been doing it for a while too - or at least something similar?
Re:Im sorry.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:As an IT guy also (Score:5, Informative)
Real features like NTFS filesystem, properly done process separation, a more robust TCP/IP stack, better support for windows domain features etc made it worth upgrading 98 to XP.
I can't think of any such compelling features for business IT in moving to Vista from XP.
Just Bought XP Laptop (Score:2, Informative)
I wanted a hot laptop, AMD TL-56 64bit DP, 1GB memory, DVD+-, good screen, Nvidia graphic card, etc. Best Buy had one that was everything I wanted but it was Vista. Ugh ugh. So I started cruising the web & found the XP version of the same machine, $100 cheaper too ! At Best Buys web site. Quick, they only have a few left... And SuSE 10.2 installed just fine...
Re:Im sorry.... (Score:2, Informative)
Until Uru (predessor to Myst Online: Uru Live) could use upto 1.5gb of memory before refusing to load anything else. On this system with XP That meant I was using 1.83gb of Ram, running it on Vista first I was only using 1.89gb of ram. Its something that has been annoying me for sometime just how does an OS with a much larger memory requirement not use that much more memory for gaming than Xp?
My Vista pros/cons (Score:5, Informative)
Pros:
Re:As an IT manager (Score:3, Informative)
I don't see how people can settle for "it's totally secure. unless WE want in".
Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Vista pros/cons (Score:3, Informative)
I keep seeing this complaint but the problem is not UAC itself, it's that by default they STILL make you the admin when you set up the computer. If you run as a regular user and have a seperate admin account that you don't log into -- it only prompts you when you try to change global settings or run software that needs to write to program files or something similar. When I first installed Vista, it was annoying until I switched over to using a regular user. I don't see UAC at all anymore, unless I'm expecting it from one of the above activities.
Fixed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Media Center (Score:5, Informative)
I was over at my friends house, he's all excited "I just got this new Vista Ultimate! Check out the Media Center". He turns on his TV, grabs the remote and starts up media center... goes to his recorded TV shows, hits play on a show from a couple days ago... we watch it for a couple minutes, then he goes back hits play on another show and.... Crash "Do you want to send a message to Microsoft?", no, start media center back up, hit play again on a different show, plays for about 3 seconds, crash again.
Then he says "Yeah, I can't get it to play more than one show per reboot... I don't know why, once you hit play on a show you have to watch that show all the way through, if you stop it or try to play another show it crashes. Once that show is done, it crashes, and you have to reboot to get it to play again"
His is just set up on a whitebox that he built and I don't know the stats or hardware he's got in it... but seriously, after seeing that and my other friend had it on his laptop (uninstalled and went back to XP after 2 weeks, couldn't get his development environment working under vista, also HATED UAC) watched him work for about 30 minutes one day, he had to have 15-20 UAC warnings in those 30 minutes, all for very normal things to do (like joining a wifi network) I'm never installing Vista, I'm glad I've got a non-OEM copy of XP that I can install on new hardware.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
The SQL client I use at work has a modal dialog box pop up while executing a query, unfortunately because of the size of the data sets I'm working on some of my queries go for hours, the program itself also frequently crashes.
bada bing, without too much effort on the developers part I have an application that takes over my screen all the time.
GP is right, having the client process deal with window messages is right up there with Microsoft's worst bad design decisions.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:4, Informative)
You have no idea what you are talking about. I think you are confusing the 'single input queue of OS/2' with Windows, which since Win3.x has always had a multi-input queue.
Vista also has several changes that address this even futher. For example the composer can even redraw unresponsive applications without any I/O lock.
Anyone that has used Windows with an NT base like 2k/XP/Vista knows that 99% of the time you can still 'Close and sometimes Minimize/Move' a crashed application; and in Vista it is 100% of the time on all of the above.
Meanwhile OSX and E17 demonstrate that you can put a glitzy interface on an OS that's quite suitable for server purposes
You are kidding right? Have you ever even seen performance numbers comparing Windows 2003 server to OSX Server? Have you even seen deployments of remote RDP users on a Windows 2003 server with all the themes and UI glitz of XP active?
The scary thing is that Longhorn even takes this to the next level, letting remote users run the 3D Aero interface remotely, fully accelerated locally because the Vista/Longhorn composer is pusing Vector and 3D information over RDP. Lets see you run a 3D application on any other Server OS or even Desktop OS 4,000 miles away with hardware acceleration and with a 3D UI with all the glitz. And this is something Vista does today, and Longhorn Beta will do later this year. I have seen our techs easily using glass and accelerated 3D applications from a Vista or Longhorn server session on a 56K connection, which is past impressive to being a bit scary.
I'm pretty sure the only way that Microsoft could design an OS that didn't suck would be to tear the whole thing down and start from scratch, though
And maybe if you knew what you were talking about you would understand the NT kernel of Windows is considered to be one of the best OS foundations, even from critics in the OSS world, it is the Win32 subsystem that takes a beating and MS could very easily replace it at any point.
But then again, if you had any clue you wouldn't have made the irresponsible and inaccurate statements in your post.
Next time do a google or even ask the 10 year old computer nerd that lives next door before trying to add information on something you know nothing about.
Re:As an IT guy also (Score:2, Informative)
Yeh, I guess Wireless, VERY useful GPOs, Remote Assitance, IPSec, Remote Desktop, Firewall, improved event logs...etc means nothing to you.
I currently support networks with both XP and 2000, 2000 are by far much more difficult to manange them XP. By your statement I have to assume that you either don't manage multiple XP and 2000 workstations or you don't know about the added feature in Xp to make your life easier.
Not quite (Score:5, Informative)
Compared to XP, Vista is a mixed bag. There are some user experience improvements, and way the menus work on the start menu is an improvement. Aside from the initial disorientation, the UI is closer to what XP's should have been.
However, there are many complaints I have about Vista. UAC is the biggest one, and this can result in corrupted installs of some software (including Apache), and it is simply way too tempting to turn off every security improvement that Vista offers. Whatever Vista does, it will *not* make Windows that much more secure-- it just allows Microsoft to blame the users.
I also find Vista to be surprisingly slow (granted I only have 512MB RAM in this system) and some settings like UAC are hard to find. I think that Vista is going to be a support headache for everyone, and I do not recommend that people upgrade.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile OSX[...]
Re:Im sorry.... (Score:3, Informative)
I'm running my knoppix remaster, kernel 2.4, and "top" shows:
Cpu(s): 0.5% user, 2.0% system, 0.0% nice, 97.6% idle
Mem: 256268k total, 251592k used, 4676k free, 3856k buffers
Swap: 1405648k total, 2156k used, 1403492k free, 159616k cached
As you can see, this is only a 256 MB of RAM machine, and quite a bit is "used", also the Swap is being used. I'm running Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.2, and using IceWM for "X". (See screenshots, below)
I know from experience, that if I now want to fire up GIMP, I can work on a bunch of images if I want to, and this setup will have no problems with that. I use a HD partition for a gimp-swap. I suppose that Vista can do the same thing, but requiring a dual core, and 2 GB of RAM, the norm for a lot of machines Dell has for sale now. I have seen one of these machines, but with XP, and was amazed at the number of apts that can be opened at once and run successfully for hours, without any problems. There are a lot of applications available for XP, and I have noted that the users tend to load up their desktops with a ton of icons for the apts, very impressive indeed to someone who maintains a livecd linux, with a defined set of applications, not very expandable, but do-able with the "persistent home" hard drive partition. If I can get ahold of an application in a tarball, such as a new, or perhaps a nightly build of Firefox, for instance, then I can add that to the running linux system, and have it come back the next time the box is booted. OK for a livecd linux such as mine, but not in the same league as XP or Vista. I'm thinking the world would be a much duller place without them, sorry to see so much bad press about the expensive Vista OS, and the powerful machines that run it.
Re:Me (Score:4, Informative)
i'm the first staff member in my place of business (with between 700 and 900 employees) that's using it. there is 1 issue that i see so far... group policy in AD. we have policies that force the user to use automatic updates (because too few computers were being updated). it prevented me from getting around that to install the optional updates (which include drivers and office 2003 updates as the policy did not allow me to install microsoft update). i had them exclude me from the policy though, that way i got all the updates i needed, mostly for office and drivers.
frankly, i think while the UAC is quite annoying to the power user who installs a lot of stuff (especially since i had to for my clean install), it won't be that bad for the user who buys a computer with vista pre-installed since the average user does not install a whole lot. i think it has the potential to make it more secure by making them think before they say "accept".
unless my computer literally blows up, i will not be reverting back to XP. and for the record, your comparison of vista with ME is completely off the mark. ME was just plain terrible and a completely different operating system altogether. vista was built practically from the ground up and has a lot of nice features (some purely superficial) and is 100x more stable than ME, perhaps the worst operating system ever made (at least by MS). i strongly recommend anyone buying a new computer to get it with vista, at least home premier.
my laptop is an HP nc8430 with a core duo 2.16 MHz, 1 GB RAM and ATI raedon x1600 with 256 MB, happily running vista.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course OSX is not superior to Vista (Score:3, Informative)
Each succeeding Windows generation always runs WORSE on the same hardware than the older one.
Untrue. On higher-end hardware, new versions of Windows (along with other OSes) are usually faster because they are updated and tuned to make better use of that higher end hardware (which probably didn't even exist when the previous version was released).
Vista on, say, an 8-core machine will be substantially faster - especially under load - than XP or 2k on that same machine.
With OSX this is just the opposite. Each newer version runs faster on a vintage Mac of similar age, than the one before.
Well, when you start of with the abominably bad performance that OS X had on release, there's nowhere to go but up. Windows can't really follow that lead.
Don't expect this to conitnue, by the way - eventually (probably after 10.5) Apple are going to run out of those "easy" optimisations that Microsoft were doing to NT back in the early-mid '90s and those "free upgrades" you get with each release are going to stop.
Compare ebay prices of 7 year old Macs with similar aged Windows boxes.
But don't forget to compare the _new_ prices those computers were 7 years ago, and their relative performance.
The 400Mhz iMacs Apple first introduced in July of 2000, will run the current OSX10.4 faster than any earlier versions of OSX and in its FULL capability of eye candy.
No, it won't, because Macs that old don't have the video hardware to handle Quartz Extreme.
Try to get VISTA ultimate with Aero to run on any PC box of that age.
Done it. I've got an 800Mhz, 1GB RAM P3 running Vista just fine. Only upgrade was a $30 video card.
You may not change the computer in any way other than stuff it with as much RAM as it will take.
Ah, as is typical with Mac Zealots you apply a ludicriously arbitrary restriction so your "argument" works.
Macs may be a bit more expensive, but in the long term they are a much better buy. Kind of like our Hondas.
No, they're not.
Re:Unfortunately (Score:2, Informative)
The GGGP however, is incorrect about OS/2. OS/2 didn't suffer from this problem in the same way, since each application ran on its own thread(s). A properly designed PM app actually had separate threads for input and output, which helped even more. There was no single system wide thread for input/output. Even the Win32s apps weren't locked in the same way they were on MS OSes, hence the "Better windows than Windows" statement.
I'd personally love to see IBM offer the PM and filesystem components of OS/2 running on a Linux kernel. The PM interface would solve one of the major issues with KDE/Gnome, and their HPFS386 file system (since 2MB cache in HPFS is just too small these days) is an incredible performer for workstations. The licensing/patent deal on that should have expired as well, so there's no more $80 per copy payment to MS. (If you ever wondered why OS/2 wasn't sold for less to compete with MS, there's one major part of it)