PC Magazine Editor Throws in the Towel on Vista 816
MacNN caught this incredible defection and loss of faith by a former Vista booster, PC Magazine editor-in-chief Jim Louderback, as he steps down from his position. "I've been a big proponent of the new OS over the past few months, even going so far as loading it onto most of my computers and spending hours tweaking and optimizing it. So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn't work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can't get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux."
If he's such an MS whore (Score:1, Interesting)
The ONE good thing about VISTA: (Score:5, Interesting)
After being forced on to Vista by Sony - after unwittingly buying a VAIO which is stuck with Vista. I am totally fed up with it.
So far, I have found 3 features which are cool, and hundreds of issues.
Took me around 2 hours one day to edit the TNSNAMES.ORA file on my Oracle (dev) installation... until I worked out the trick.
My next Laptop will be OSX, next Workstation will be Linux - and I already run Linux (CentOS) servers.
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:5, Interesting)
- a happy Vista user, for the record
me too (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had the opposite experience. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now it's pretty smooth sailing.
With that said, I'm still considering just going to Ubuntu. Vista is OK I guess, but there's nothing in it that's terribly compelling. I like the look and feel of it, but I prefer all the software available a click away with Ubuntu. (I'm no newcomer to Linux, the Vista box is my last Windows machine). Whenever the next Ubuntu version comes out I'll try it out on the workstation and see if sleep mode actually works. Then just run vmware for the one or two remaining Windows apps I can't live without.
Vista Issues, Linux Issues (Score:1, Interesting)
Nope. Networking is much better, but the sound card defaults to the SPDIF out (of which there is no physical connection) and X always insists that the best resolution I can manage is 1024x768 (not true!). Pleads for help, hours with google, etc come to nothing. Even Kubuntu which nearly works off the disc still has the sound and X issues.
Windows 2000 was close to perfect for me, but MS dropped the ball. Yes, it's good that they fixed various fundamental problems, but they broke too much in doing so. And Linux, even with the ease of Kubuntu, still has a long way to go.
MS-DOS anyone?
Vista drove me to OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:5, Interesting)
-nB
* NOT IT, vastly different purposes in life. IT is about mainstream hardware, standard servers, only having to deploy 2-3 images across 90% of the company. Engineering Computing is about the other 10%. Almost as many images as users, custom hardware specs, support for *every* OS available, back to Win3.1 and across 17 different linux distros. If they say "no way" to Vista, then I'm sold on the opinion and won't touch it (incidentally, nor will IT for the same reason).
Wha? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:2, Interesting)
(Unless you're into games).
Power-saving on Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People will wait for Vista SP1, or XP SP3 or... (Score:5, Interesting)
I understand people change their minds, but I'd be lying if I said I question whether or not his change of heart on Vista would be public if he wasn't leaving the magazine world (dependent heavily on MS for ad revenue and stories) for another field.
Almost no musician's apps work on Vista (Score:1, Interesting)
I think it's a wholly new O/S, and getting new O/S's to a working state always takes many years --- look how long it took Linux, the BSDs, OSX and even Windows 3->NT->XP to become usable. That's why Vista is basically dead, you can't create new operating systems overnight (and 3 years is still "overnight").
Rather than being buried as it deserves, Vista may actually continue in its moribund state for another 5-10 years until it finally starts working as well as XP. Unfortunately, Microsoft has tons of cash and too much pride to throw Vista in the bin immediately.
It should have stuck with polishing XP, evolution not revolution. This misunderstanding about the lifecycle of operating systems is going to cost MS literally billions and billions in the long run.
What Problem? (Score:1, Interesting)
It never ceases to amaze me how many people who claim to have expertise with computers are only pushing buttons at random and then complain when their systems don't work.
I have loaded Vista onto my newest laptop. Mind you this is installing Vista over an existing XP installation with which the system came. The system works great, admittedly it is a new Inspiron with a dual core Intel chip. The only issue is that I didn't uninstall the XP Powertoys before converting and now they won't uninstall, oh well.
Everything works better and faster than the original XP installation. I run, finally as a user rather than Administrator, I rarely get any UAC warnings unless I am doing an administrative task. I know that installers run with elevated privileges but I have not seen or heard of an exploit.
If you can't get Vista to run right then you are doing something wrong. Old or bad hardware (almost always the cause of BSOD) or old or funky software will cause problems but I haven't run any DOS or 16 bit windows software in many years. I run a mix of commercial and open source software, mostly for software development and web development.
If you like Linux, knock yourself out, but I have work to do. I need documentation, user interface standards and stable code.
Regards,
Chris
Nope, I'd believe they reworked it from ground-up (Score:2, Interesting)
The number of issues for things that were stable in XP is far too great for me to believe they used the same codebase.
If anything, it's an XP skin on a far inferior operating system, IMO. And just about every single feature that's new for Vista
- Already exists in Linux
- Exists in third-party apps in XP
Why anybody would even bother with Vista in it's current state is completely beyond me. Shadow copies (ie file versioning), drive encryption... Heck, Beryl has an Aero theme that does all the things Glass was touting as new and innovation, and had it working before Vista was even released. Flip and Flip-3D are already available as Beryl plugins as well. UAC is just a very poorly implemented version of sudo.
Really, only reason people should be selecting Windows for home use would be gaming support. And Vista's performance metrics are so abysmal that you'd probably just want to stick to XP anyways.
They kept touting the reworking of the codebase as for security reasons, and I'll almost believe that because it SURE as hell wasn't to increase its performance. And even the super-high-end computers are running it.
I hear SP1 for Vista is going to be a supreme performance upgrade. Good, though it would have been nicer if they used the opportunity of rewriting the codebase to actually have slick and efficient code, though apparently Microsoft isn't in the business in designing anything slick from the ground up. Instead they'll apply patches and fixes to make it look like it runs slickly. Makes sense, considering they're a little more invested in the covering-your-ass part of the software engineering process than actually producing good code.
One of the nicest advantages of GNU/linux is that it rarely breaks things with stable upgrades. The only things that get broken in upgrades are usually new features, at least in my experience. Which is nice, it means that the projects involved are constantly moving forward, unlike Microsoft which keeps having to tackle the same types of problems over and over again.
IMHO,YMMV
Non-computer savvy people don't like it? (Score:5, Interesting)
By general users, i'm talking about every day non-computer-techy types ... like my wife, my parents, my in laws, and brother. All of them use computers, but for little more than looking up general info like movies and wikis, email, some gaming and word processing. My mother is the prime example, she is the least computer literate, and when things suddenly "change" on the screen, she freaks out thinking that she broke something. While i've convinced her that a random popups window are OK (for passwords) .. the fact that the whole screen in vista flickers and the background changes (the password overlay) really gets to her. My brother, wife and i can't get out games to play correctly (video drivers for my nvidia 7800gs play games like halo 2 with horrible graphic glitchs, and even some lag in games like oblivion that i didn't have in XP, Medieval II crashed on me at least once an hour...). That's not even mentioning how vista itself seems to take up more memory which slows down the games. My father who is a minister, couldn't get some of his old files to work properly (which he needs for work). The new office (2007) actually messed more things up for him than fixed, and i had to install open office for him just to get some of his old files to OPEN so that he could then use them in 2007.
In the end... It's not that i hate windows, it's that it looks like vista was not thought out to be easier on/for the user... instead it looks like it was just planned look better on paper (BETTER SECURITY! BETTER NETWORKING! BETTER ETC!). Now add in the fact that we have to pay a TON of money just to get this stuff on our computers and it still doesn't work properly? For my parents, i actually installed (k)ubuntu for them about a month ago (KDE). They went to linux because they told ME they didn't want Vista anymore, but they didn't have money to spend on another set of MS licenses just to go back to XP. Go figure... after showing my mom for an hour how to open a browser, and open up gaim to chat and how to go into her home folder.... i've actually heard her complain LESS than when she had XP.
Re:People will wait for Vista SP1, or XP SP3 or... (Score:1, Interesting)
It appears that I've been living in a parallel universe for 11 years now, because I've been running both apps and games on Linux. Funny, but I haven't missed Windows one bit during that time.
What I've noticed about who likes Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
They are the same people who have been M$ beta testers for a number of versions, and have always been "early adopters" all the way back.
They are also people who tend to get bored with OS-related arguments very easily, and are always ready to move on to something new.
Nothing here is meant to be for or against such people; it's just what I've observed.
Myself, I haven't even tried it yet.
A Decent Vista Experience (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me start by saying that I'm no Microsoft fanboy. I can't think of one good reason to run Windows on my servers (<3 freebsd), but I do prefer it over nix/bsd for desktop use; I'm a gamer, and virtual machines are enough to give me my linux fix. I tried Vista RC2 very briefly and hated it. After my display drivers became so problematic that I literally could not see anything properly enough to even log in, I gave up.
However, I was building a new rig a few months ago and decided to give it another shot, only for DX10. In months of very heavy use (running games + movies + several virtual machines at the same time), I've been pleasantly surprised how decent it has turned out to be. The only problem I've had is widescreen not working in one game (which was achieved through an unsupported hack in the first place). The UI is significantly better, and I really do miss the improvements when I use my XP laptop for anything productive. Stability has been great, I haven't had any sort of entire-os crash at all. Drivers were exactly as they were in XP: visit site, download, click next a few times, reboot, done.
Maybe my experience is atypical, but I think the amount of criticism Vista gets is unwarranted; in particular, it really bothers me when people bash it when their experience with Vista comes from nothing but /. comments by users with equal Vista experience. Is it the best thing since sliced bread? No. Could Microsoft have done better? Very much so. Is it better than XP? Definitely.
Threw in the Towel on Vista (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The ONE good thing about VISTA: (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People will wait for Vista SP1, or XP SP3 or... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am currently involved in the preparations for founding a new startup company. Since this is a new company, there isn't a currently-existing base of Windows computers to replace. We are making decisions about what to use without regard for migrating from anywhere. So that is one respect in which 'Windows is good enough to not be replaced' fails - at least for new companies.
Furthermore, when deciding what to use, we see the following. Linux on the server - that is a done deal. No discussion even. Now, what about desktops for the developers writing code for those servers? Well, in the past they would use Windows, since it's a desktop, and to develop for Linux they would use Cygwin, virtualization or (sadly) networking. But nowadays we are very seriously considering giving them Fedora or Ubuntu desktops - why not have them run the same type of OS as the target platform, especially since it can do everything else they need, with Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.? So, you have here a case of success in the server room bleeding over to the desktop (the reverse of Windows' historical battle plan).
What about other desktops, for secretaries, business development, etc.? Well, it isn't my area, so I haven't argued as strongly for Linux there. Perhaps it does make sense to have Windows PCs for them. But even so, because of the Linux desktops for the developers, we will in all likelihood standardize on Firefox and OpenOffice internally, since they can be run everywhere. (We might end up getting a few licenses of MS Office for people that exchange documents with external entities.)
So sure, it isn't the 'year of the Linux desktop'. Maybe it never will be. But it still isn't the same as it was before.
Seconded. Microsoft missed so many opportunities. (Score:2, Interesting)
Frankly, I think that MS should have pulled an OS9->OSX style switch. Total rewrite, no more legacy crap, with the new version running on top of 64-bit BSD. That would ease porting of applications (imagine an all-posix world!), given them a stable base, and provided a modern security model all at the same time. Hell, MS owns Virtual PC. They could have stuck XP in a virtual machine for free, for those people desperate to run old apps.
Alas, I'm sure that Microsoft won't learn a single thing from the Vista disaster, and proceed to carefully and methodically fuck up the next version of Windows just as badly.
Re:The ONE good thing about VISTA: (Score:5, Interesting)
I had loaded the beta/RC on a PC I had just finished building at that time and while it was on there it worked really well - I even thought of putting on there once the OS was finally released, but I couldn't afford a new Vista box so I waited. Vista Ultimate would have been the greatest thing to meet this PC; it's an HDTV-PVR, I've got an Xbox 360 to stream to, soon I could have had the ultimate home pc-tv setup... I would have only needed a Zune (joking!).
Then I order this laptop. (My first, I'm a poor geek) Vista was kinda sweet, all that GUIness! But then I found that I wasn't really using the laptop. Why? Because it took too long to get it into a usable state. The security issues with Windows made me load three pieces of software to keep my machine protected, fine. But they had to scan on start-up each time. The machine easily took a minute to get to the welcome screen and after logging in you thought that you could click icons and start programs but they wouldn't show up for minutes (!). I know the strategy is to hibernate or suspend the laptop between uses, but that also made for long load times, and if the laptop was hibernating for more than a day it needed a restart just to get it usable again. Frankly, I didn't want to mess with it. For a top of the line machine, this shouldn't be happening. For $1000+ laptop you shouldn't be waiting this long to browse the web. Granted, I've *only ONE GIGABYTE of RAM* and not TWO - but should the OS need that much?
Frankly I was sick of it. Maybe it would work on the PVR, but I don't think I'll ever find out. You see, I'm a huge XP and 2000 fan. They are solid kernels and good operating systems, and IMHO, I've not needed to re-install either one of these once placed onto a machine. I had a webserver running Apache on XP that had multi-month uptimes. My PVR never went down, even while I played WoW, recorded a TV show while scanning another to remove the commercials. I've had a XP install running since it was first loaded in *2004*. As I've said here before, over and over, XP and 2000 don't crash if you know what you are doing. (Any problems I've had were faulty or just poor hardware/drivers, ATI this means you! Sure, it could lock up or need a reboot to drop some of my sins, but I find that every OS does on occasion. The trick is patience, a trick I refuse to learn.)
Alas, I oversaw the wedding of Ubuntu 7 and my HP laptop. A few drivers needed to be wrangled, but there is so much help documentation available online I'm convinced a child could overcome the problems I did (Ubuntu forums... god I love you). Frankly, they won't part until death. The only thing that doesn't work is hibernate and suspend, and I'm not surprised, but they aren't needed. Gnome saves my session, although I never leave anything open, and the boot time is just under one minute. And that is a cold start to a Gnome desktop. Vista couldn't run with a dual core CPU and a gig of RAM, yet Ubuntu seems to barely touch half of the RAM. Compiz, you kill Vista's Aero anyways. I have World of Warcraft working, full speed with the settings basically maxed out while Windows Vista (the OS/API family the game was written for more or less) couldn't run the game over 3fps (I would do a spell while the casting bar was still filling up).
What a huge rant to say: Switch to linux. Your PC will thank you.
About the author: ImaLamer is a huge open source zealot who was turned onto the beauty of the Windows 2000 family (2000, XP) while at school. Frankly he hates Microsoft, and is afraid of them more than his own government, but knows that 2000 and XP just plain work
eben moglen was right (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not trying to extoll the virtues of Vista (that'd be pretty wasted on /., anyway, given the fairly strong Microsoft hate) or anything like that, it was more or less idle curiosity. I'm sorry to hear your experience has been poor, I really am, and I hope you either resolve the issues, or have a copy of XP sitting around.
I really don't think Microsoft is trying to drive sales of XP, though. They didn't have to do anything to accomplish that, they could've just sat around and XP would've been bundled with all the new computers. Easy money for them, why waste time and money developing Vista to accomplish the same amount (or less) of sales, if that were their goal?
Short memories (Score:3, Interesting)
Moving for the sake of moving (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree that your average user won't be doing this, but they could if they did a little reading. If I hade a pound for every user who's come to me about an error message that tells them EXACTLY what the problem is...
Re:Allegedly? Do Tell... (Score:2, Interesting)
Except that there are obvious problems selling Vista-based computers, even with 'clueless users' supposedly 'don't even know what OS is on their computer'. Otherwise, why would all of the major PC manufacturers still be giving customers an option to have XP, and why would some of the biggest ones like Dell and Lenovo begin offering Linux-based PCs?
Let's face it -- Vista's days are numbered and, thus, so are Microsoft's. Even Microsoft knows it, that's why the fancy dancing with Linux, open source, and Linux-based companies (including Novell) lately, whatever their true motives.
Call me a Microsoft hater, call me a slashbot, call me whatever you want
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:3, Interesting)
The OS being a resource hog is (at least in part) caused by the DRM.
On that note... (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, after hours of tweaking my gateway I still could not get the damn thing under 210MB Idle at startup with no startup programs running and all useless services turned off (and with XPSP2 I generally like it to be somewhere around 77MB usage max on a clean restart on mem usage considering no other programs are launched ar startup), and the interface, even though it resembled windows 2000 after I was done with it, was still very slow and unresponsive. The networking was a nightmare and didn't work 1/2 of the time, and NONE OF THE SYSTEMS WOULD SLEEP RIGHT! heck, 2 of the systems wouldn't even hibernate for me, and this is a preloaded system. Tech support at gateway, acer, and everex all assured me that it was a driver problem and that all of it was resolved in new drivers....which they hadn't been.... I got excuses stemming from microsoft, themselves, their vendors, driver writers, you name it, excuses, but no solutions.
So I went through updating driver and patch hell, sometimes installing modified xp drivers in attempt to get things working, got called a liar and many other nasty things on some unofficial vista support forums after suggesting I was displeased with the performance and suggesting that this cannot be just the driver's fault alone,
after about 3 hours of dicking around with things so far buried into the operating system I was beginning to think that it was like trying to get Xfree86 running in Red Hat 5 with a ATI radeon back in the day, and several system recovery's later after I screwed up the OS so badly it wouldn't boot anymore, so I threw in the towel and loaded XP on the two laptops that were going to my family members, and left vista on mine. I finally got it running almost decently, and ran it for two weeks and noticed that it tended to slow down at random times.
I found vista required the most work out of the box to make it even slightly functional-
I mean on other OS's, I don't have to surgically remove useless services, ei the windows "nanny", or interfaces which chew up ram to make something look pretty, or find odd versions of drivers which are broken in one regard, but possibly not another, drivers that weren't even made for the device I am using, but perhaps another made by a different vendor with the same chipset. Also it doesn't help that there are stumbling blocks built right into it because they assume that the user is completely useless, or the fact that they re-arranged all the important control panels, and replaced quite a few of them with useless counterparts. I finally gave up on my laptop and loaded XP onto it.
For those who are curious, I did go through a few headaches tracking down drivers for everything in XP, but i found that more often than not the XP drivers were bundled with the vista drivers, or at least the vista drivers somehow worked under XP. I have already loaded XP on 11 of my customer's laptops which came with one form of vista or another, and I have already run out of my little stockpile of XP Pro OEM liscenses I bought a years back... Perhaps I should snag a few more before they disappear.
It Couldn't Possibly be the Drivers? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've found that the more someone messes with settings, the more likely they are to cause serious problems down the line. I have no doubt that this self-proclaimed power user has been doing plenty of messing around.
On the other hand, I have a brand-new Dell system which did not ship with Vista. I loaded Vista on it, and everything works perfectly -- including sleep and hibernate. I also have a two-year old Dell laptop which I loaded Vista onto, and it too works perfectly. The wireless reconnects after a standby in 15-20 seconds. Not great, but not bad enough to drive me to Linux.
His issues might have more clout if they were experienced by more people. But it seems to me that the only people "suffering" from Vista are the ones who are using unsupported hardware, or are trying to mess with settings to the point they break things. Oh, there's also the group that spreads FUD about Vista without actually trying it, regurgitating the FUD that others have already tried to spread.
Here's a conspiracy theory: Jim Louderback's new company is a geek-focused video-blog of sorts, professing the greatness of BitTorrent and other open-standard goodness. Could it be that this final editorial was an attempt to give him a little bit of geek street cred? Shame Vista and the geeks will come.
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Allegedly? Do Tell... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the famous one is A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Guttman [auckland.ac.nz]; which goes into great detail.
Its not really the DRM, so much, as it is all the "features" (cough cough) that supports the DRM, especially how Vista encrypts alot of traffic crossing the system busses...and how Vista checks the "tilt bits" many many many times per second. All this needless "housekeeping" slows the system down.
You should see how long Vista takes to boot up and run on a Sempron 3100+ with 512mb of ram...
Ye Gods, it's so damned sloooowwwww...
Translation. (Score:2, Interesting)
DaveCBio brags:
I reboot when I install driver updates, but other than that the apps I use 90% of the time are SF, Vegas and Pro Tools and they are solid. In other words they don't crash, even when I push them. I can do 60 tracks of audio with no problems and render HD video with multi-track audio and effects and I don't remember a crash. Do I leave my PC on 100% of the time? No, but that's a personal choice and is more about power consumption than anything.
In other words, you boot your computer daily and use if for fancy audio and video work. It rarely crashes while you do this. That's nice, but I expect better and can never, go back to working that way.
I expect better than one day uptime and all the benefits that brings. Instead of booting my laptop, I open the lid and it wakes up. All my work is right where I left it spread across 54 well organized virtual desktops. I can comfortably work on five major projects at once and never forget what I was doing with any of them.
I can't help you with non free video and audio formats but cinerella and audacity are first rate editors. I do not know if they can do everything you need because that's not the kind of work I do.
I'm happy things are working for you but that's more a testament to you being able to work around technical limitations than a story of how great Windoze is.
I guess I'm the only one.... (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, it doesn't offer much over what XP did, except for a few new icons, better integrated search, widgets, and "Aero" which sucks anyway.
But it works fine. I have an nVidia graphics card for which drivers are quite good. ATI cards (i had one earlier) and I did have some lockups with that, but ATI is notorious for bad driver support, and so I swapped to nVidia. I have a Creative X-Fi card, an HDCP compliant monitor (Dell 24" sweetness!), and a USB Keyboard/Mouse. Everything works just like it did with XP.
I admit, I'm kind of an early adopter. Some things annoyed me constantly, like the User Account Control (UAC) and I turned off almost immediately. I run as "Administrator" on my PC. Sleep doesn't work worth a damn, and will always lock up my PC if I try it (It's a custom build though). Didn't work that well under XP either, for that matter.
The issue with Vista or XP or Microsoft on the desktop versus Linux isn't really the issue here. It's a suite of products that Microsoft offers as a complement to their OS which makes Microsoft on the desktop a reasonable business case for most folks. To be sure, not all folks -- I am not going to try and kid you here. Linux has a lot of benefits, so does Mac, but in the end Microsoft development tends to be cheaper and easier to support than any other software deployment for large organizations.
And why do a lot of people have Windows on their PCs at home? "I use it at work." It's not an uncommon answer, and if you can step away from the Slashdot bias (I know it's tough, but try), ask average, every day users why they have a Windows PC at home. That will be in the top 5 answers. That, and Windows PCs are pretty cheap too, and only idiots buy pre-built Linux PCs because frankly, you can get Windows for $25 and format it with Linux ANYWAY. Few people buy Linux PCs for their kids to use, because there are almost zero educational games for Linux. Dell gives people the option because it is pure profit for them to do it -- it's only changing a standard image that the PC you are buying is getting rolled out. Very easy to do, and costs them nothing. You actually wind up paying a premium because you lost out on a copy of Windows for $25 that you could have kept for some other purpose.
I digress though... Windows PCs in the enterprise are generally the norm. Office in a corporate environment is also a 'norm'. Now add to that Sharepoint, which is now Microsoft's fastest growing product, BizTalk which allows for rapid software development without any coding whatsoever (it's all graphical coding) and allows business managers to make changes to 'software' without requiring a developer. Then there is IIS which is probably MS's best product. Other software like Softgrid, SMS, Project, etc... these are all tie-ins to IE, and a Windows based desktop.
If you move to Linux on the desktop, you lose all of those options, and there are no quick fixes to find replacements. Want software to manage and inventory your entire enterprise, roll out patches, software, and lock down workstations for different users? SMS+Active Directory are pretty easy and pretty cheap, and work on Windows only. Is there an equivalent for Linux or Mac? Probably -- but then you lose out on something else, like say, Sharepoint Server which you really could use for your document management, or BizTalk where you wanted to let your managers change business logic on the fly without a developer.
See, the way Microsoft beats Linux and Mac on the desktop is by pushing it through on the corporate side. If we want Linux or Mac to take over the desktop, then they need to offer a SUITE of products. Mac will frankly *never* take over the desktop because it's a closed architecture and they are the only ones who sell the hardware. For a lot of companies, that's like dealing with a mafia and they won't have it. Linux has a great shot, and with the "Click and Run" technology coming out I'm very excited to see the future of Linux as it draws closer
Vista, Mac, throwing in the towel, etc (Score:5, Interesting)
Why care about networking and wireless? Because it's the lifeblood of my computers. I share tons of stuff with my other computers at home, and I like to see them actually working together. Music, video, files, etc, all run off the network. The XP machines are up automatically, while Vista takes forever. And the made for Vista notebook I've been using is the worst of all of them.
As to the Mac... I didn't have space to get into the sleep problems that our 20" iMac suffers through - like why doesn't it actually go to sleep reliably, and why is the fan so loud. Guess I shouldn't have purchased one of the last PPC iMacs, or maybe I should just buy a new Mac every year...
FWIW, I didn't leave because I was sick of pandering to Windows, or any of those other suggestions. PCMag has always been, and will continue to be independent. The editors there make the best decisions about products based on their voluminous knowledge and experience, not because of advertisers. Witness the strong Mac-based reviews recently, for example.
jim
I touched Vista - once. Never again (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, to cut a long story short - I will *never* use Vista again. I had Vista "for business" but it is better named "AGAINST business" for the following reasons:
It doesn't work. This was on a Sony VAIO SZ4, so-called "Vista ready". Well, it wasn't. Frequent lockups, a gazillion popups ("you have moved your mouse - allow/deny?"), running like a slug, taking forever to boot up, I could go on. If I hadn't used Beryl on Linux I could have suffered under the delusion that Vista is just heavy on the machine because of graphics but Beryl proves it can be FAST and pretty if you code properly.
It is extremely chatty on the Net. I logged traffic emanating from this machine that I most certainly did not authorise. I spend a good hour or so disabling all the phone-home features that somehow default to the suppliers' preference and there was still plenty going on in the background. Sorry, not in my backyard, not with IT *I* paid for and not with bandwidth that is under *my* contract. If you want to hire my computer, go ahead and sign a contract, otherwise it's simply theft (that's what spam is as well).
DRM IS A MAJOR, REPEAT, MAJOR THREAT TO BUSINESS STABILITY AND RESILIENCE. Analyse how DRM works: the chain from origin to output has to be 100% functional for you to reach your information (that's why the word "chain" is so appropriate here). That has a few obvious implications and I can't believe that so little is made of it. Tell me where I'm wrong here:
- if any component in the chain fails, access to any DRM "protected" resource is impossible. I may be wrong here, but AFAIK that means the MTBF of such a chain is the lowest MTBF of the components involved, divided by the number of components. That makes failure not a probability, it makes it a certainty.
- it puts serious barriers in the way to fast recovery from problems.
- NONE of the components in this chain is of a long and trusted heritage. I would be very interested to meet the person who is willing to entrust his entire corporate infrastructure to a Microsoft + hardware vendors beta test. As it happens, it appears many are prepared to do so - it's going to be interesting to see anyone claim off insurance when it goes wrong.
As for that laptop, I solved the problem with installing Ubuntu, VMWare and an as yet unused OEM copy of Windows XP (I don't use unlicensed software). Works for me, stable, and less of a worry re viruses (I have been using Openoffice.org for a year now as it works under Linux AND Windows).
Vista? No way. From what I hear from others it has proved quite a sales push, but for Windows XP licenses, Macs and Linux. Given the amount of talent MS has hired I take that as the lowest return on investment ever.
They can keep it.
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the famous one is A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection by Peter Guttman; which goes into great detail.
And is mostly FUD, resulting in people believing things like this:
Its not really the DRM, so much, as it is all the "features" (cough cough) that supports the DRM, especially how Vista encrypts alot of traffic crossing the system busses...and how Vista checks the "tilt bits" many many many times per second. All this needless "housekeeping" slows the system down.
Vista only does this when you are using DRM-encumbered media. It does not do it at other times.
Re:If he's such an MS whore (Score:3, Interesting)
I still don't feel the configuration mechanisms they've come up with so far in linux are up to scratch though. The original stuff such as the ifupdown-tools are really more suited to very static environments. Networkmanager can be nice but it really sucks at any kind of error reporting and is not yet (in the latest version of ubuntu) at what I would call production level in terms of quality.
As for windows, well, I don't actually use it much nowadays, but it occurs to me the things I hate about networkmanager (such as sometimes very crappy error reporting capability) is exactly the thing that annoys me in windows as well. While some stuff does get logged to syslog it seems you're forever guessing what is happening in the background. Not a problem if everything "just works" but I tend to like/dislike stuff based on how much of a crapshoot it is when things don't work.
Re:Disappointed by this expert (Score:3, Interesting)
Since I have nearly 20 years of pleasant transitions from Apple, why would I worry about the next one? The naysayers say wait for version 2, because that's what they are used to in the Windows world. In the Apple world, I'd say be wary of a product at the end of its lifetime, because Apple is preparing to abandon it as soon as the next great thing is ready for prime time.
Being an early adapter in the Apple world also ensures longer usable life span. Unlike early MS products, I'm not spending most of my time tweaking, patching, and installing driver updates, just to get the stupid thing to work. My Intel iMac will get several years of use, where as if I had bought a G5 iMac at the end of its life-cycle, I would have dumped it by now (in favor of an Intel iMac). Apple is pretty consistent with product release too, so I know that this recent bump in iMacs guarantees nothing new is in the works for a good year or two. By then, my Intel iMac will be three years old, and I'll gladly plop down another $2k for a shiny new Mac.
Re:Makes sense to me, AC. Vista users are unhappy. (Score:2, Interesting)
On the server side we're running samba, svn, apache, everything but the kitchen sink on Suse, ~500 day uptime so far.
So as long as we can keep using downgrade licenses and deploy 2K, Microsoft will keep getting our money, but if we're ever forcibly migrated to XP or God forbid Vista, we will finally have to face the fact that Windows in not an industrial O.S. and we'll have to port to Linux.