Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues" 520
EggsAndSausage writes "Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.' It has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1, due out later this year, which will address 'regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues.' It's hard to know whether to be reassured that Service Pack 1 is coming in the second half of 2007, and thus that there is a timeframe for considering deployment of Vista within businesses, or to be alarmed that Microsoft is unleashing an OS on the world with 'high impact issues' still remaining." In other news, one blogger believes that Vista is the first Microsoft OS since Windows 3.1 to have regressed in usability from its predecessor (he kindly forgives and dismisses Windows ME). And there's a battle raging over the top 10 reasons to get Vista or not to get Vista.
Using Vista for a bit (Score:3)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
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I guess the issue for MS is, that you and I (computer guru's) have picked up and embraced the XP paradigm but people like my wife never get it no matter how many times it is explained to her. So MS tried to move to another paradigm (am I using this properly?) to help more non-technical people understand how to find "basic" information.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think you're wrong. I don't think changing these names and rearranging things is more usable to people with a different overall
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and basing your post on RC2 (a "release candidate" - not the final version, if that needs to be said) doesn't help, either.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I suspect that upgraders who paid for a multi-year license for their Antivirus software are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about the DRM, you see. MS has to be seen to control the entire transport path, to reassure its media partners that they can safely release their wares for Vista. I think I even read a story here recently that a VAR wound up replacing the disc burning software they normally bundled with the default Vista program, because their regular software had such serious issues. What do you want to be MS made them a pretty good offer to stick with the MS solution?
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Funny)
It's because if the hackers gain control over the laser, they can hold your computer ransom. Or at least your Puff^h^h^h^hP Diddy CD. You wouldn't know it, but the Iraq war is entirely because Osama Bin Laden is holding Dick Cheney's autographed Toni Braxton CD for ransom.
Or maybe that's just what they want you to think....
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What I want to know is why the file browser doesn't have this capability on its own? Finder in OSX does burning well enough. Gnome is actually the easiest -- just right click on an iso and choose "burn", or drag a bunch of files to the CD icon and burn those. You would think that MS could afford to have cd/dvd bu
Pfft GUIs - you can keep 'em (Score:4, Interesting)
rm
echo eject >
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/4/cdfs [bell-labs.com]
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They cheat and access low level routines and hardware
They want you to pay for a real copy and not keep using the OEM version that came with your drive so there is no real reason to try to guess what might work in the future
Just my thoughts I could be wrong
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I believe the grandparent's point was that users expect their software to work on Vista like it did on XP, if Vista
Of course it's an upgrade (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are missing the point. If I need to use specific software, and it runs easier on XP than on Vista, or runs on XP and not on Vista, then Vista is not an upgrade for my purposes, and there is no reason to purchase Vista. Whether or not Vista is an overall superior OS compared to XP doesn't matter for my purposes if Vista is inferior for my specific software needs.
I could be wrong, though. Others may disagree.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Informative)
AE, Open GL (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stick with XP until Vista SP one, the same way one should have stuck with 2k (not talking about home users here, though 2k was good even for home use) until XP SP1, etc.
For the OEMs, well...they get Vista for 5$ over the price of the raw hardware, so I guess its consolation. Or just don't buy OEM. For the rest for whom all these options are not possible...well, they're allowed to complain I guess.
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The hardware is the main reason I upgraded-- that and i don't enjoy scratch building like i used to.
However, all my "real" processing is headed towards linux- the windows box is mainly for gaming. I just don't trust windows any more with my data. I think they will try to lock it in and they will control it for other people at my expense.
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, they kind of pretty much both work-- except where Vista doesn't work. I've tried Vista on a few computers. On some it works, and on others there aren't drivers yet for all the hardware. A lot of my software works on Vista, while some.... not so much.
You might say, "Hey, no big deal. Just get hardware and software that works on Vista!" Of course, one of the main things that keeps people on Windows is the inertia, that they already have all of this hardware and software that works with Windows. If
Re:Using Vista for a bit (Score:5, Informative)
> Exactly how is it less usable then XP. They pretty much both work.
I think the first post on this page [hardforum.com] (check out the images) summarize it pretty succinctly:
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Wow, now Windows is having the same problems playing commercial DVD's as Linux. It's about time they caught up to Linux.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
Want to cross our DRM? Pay our toll! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a strong believer in the "Microsoft has no real choice" hypothesis. I don't think MS need the RI/MPAA members of the world as much as they need MS. First of all, MS are a part of, and presumably very active, member of the AACS licensing agency. I know this because it says so in the specifications. Maybe the other members could block them from implementing it, but I consider that unlikely (and why would they want too?).
Secondly, and the real point, MS rule basically every desktop in the world already. Do you believe that computes to leverage FOR or AGAINST Microsoft when negotiation with the MPAAs? Truly, the MPAAs would be at the mercy of MS. "Here's the DRM we're willing of giving you in Vista, be glad you're getting as much!".
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
BTW. Do you know what company I didn't see stamped on the first page of the AACS specifications?
Apple.
Lesser members perhaps. Now who is in control?
Re:Want to cross our DRM? Pay our toll! (Score:4, Insightful)
But the question is, how much of the MPAA's market are PCs responsible for? I don't know, but I get the sense that it's not a terribly large percentage. I at least hear a lot of "I'm sick of the movie theatres; it's so much better to watch movies on a home theatre", and I doubt the people saying that are watching them on their computers.
Then, think about what if they didn't support it. They'd have to have something somewhere saying "Vista doesn't support watching HD-DVD or Blue-Ray disks because the MPAA won't let us." But who do you think consumers would blame? Is the average person rational enough to go out, study the issue, and see that MS was the one being reasonable? Doubt it. I bet they'd go "Stupid Windows! Why can't I watch my Blue-ray?" This would leave, say, Apple a nice window in which to say, "hey, we'll capitulate to the MPAA's demands", and now MS is hurting even more. (They're vulnerable enough already. And I don't think it's terribly unreasonable to expect that Apple would take advantage of that situation, though I doubt they'd implement all the restrictions MS has. Apple has already shown willingness to capitulate to some extent with iTunes, and I think Jobs is shrewd enough to notice an opportunity to steal market share like that would provide.)
I'm more a follower of the "Microsoft is doing this for their own, lock-in based, reasons". The history of Microsoft is the history of vendor lock-in and market control through technology.
Maybe MS really want the RIAAs and MPAAs on their side in the fight against the iPod? Maybe if MS give the RIAAs and the MPAAs what they want. One back scratched for another... If I didn't despise the MPAAs of the world, I'd raise a warning about MS long documented betrayalish ways, but I do.
I do think this is a good point though. I don't really buy that MS is in the clear either. They certainly seem over-eager to please to me. Surely they could have put up SOME resistance to DRM. (I just don't think they could have removed it entirely.)
I guess what my feelings are on this is, yeah, MS is at fault here, but at the same time, even if they were run by totally principled, upstanding people who shared the
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The idea is that you're supposed to type a few letters in the search box to find the program you're looking for. It just seems to me having to search with the keyboard for a program you want to open is counterintuitive.
it's a euphemism. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm sure they're using the phrase "High impact" in much the same way as the NTSB.
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Win XP wins out over VISTA... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is way too expensive to be a business user and wind up "testing" a new OS with no easy way to regress.
Win XP Pro is going to be an option to install on most PCs for a long long time.
Prepare for the fasted ever Service Pack (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that so much people are thinking just like us "I'll wait Vista mature a bit, at least until SP1, before I give it a try" is the exact reason why Microsoft is going to rush out the fastest Service Pack you're ever seen.
One blogger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does "one blogger"'s view qualify as "news"? I'm sure at least "one blogger" thinks that OSX sucks or at least "one blogger" thinks that Linux sucks. Would that qualify as "news" as well?
The quality of the "news stories" that slashdot carries has gone downhill drastically in recent months.
Re:One blogger? (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm just kidding ok, they have their days.
One blogger? Pay more attention. (Score:2)
Of course, it'd be a lot more interesting if we could actually read the other slashdotted links. But even the "one blogger" story is at least interesting. Just because he's not some respected journalist (or even a disrespected journalist like Cringley or Dvorak) doesn't mean his opinion of Vista isn't just as valid.
Every large N started out with 0. (Score:2, Informative)
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Granted, it's a geeky sort of article. What I'm trying to say is, it sounds like it's not your cup of tea, which is OK. It's a free country, but you should remit your slashdot license at the earliest possible opportunity. They actually ran out of user ID's at 999,999 and it's important that
"Inbuilt undelete" (Score:4, Funny)
Or, depending on how you look at it, inbuilt rolling backup. Every time you make a change to a file or delete it, Windows keeps the previous version. As a result, the "oh !@#$ I just overwrote my entire PhD with Document1" feeling can be quickly assuaged. Read more...
But the read more link is broken. Maybe they need to restore it with undelete.
This sounds exciting... I've always wanted a filesystem that would act like CVS with each save. I don't know if this is doing quite that, but it's intriguing at least. (I think there's a Linux filesystem called Elephant that does something like this, but I haven't looked into it much.
(The other thing that I wonder why other file systems haven't adopted is NTFS's alternate streams. They seem like they could be really useful for some stuff...)
Re:"Inbuilt undelete" (Score:4, Insightful)
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And Reiser seems to have murdered his wife and probably won't have much time to write any new code.
He'll have plenty of time; he'll just have to use a crayon...
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I'm surprised it's taken Windows that long. OTOH the feature currently doesn't work on Vista (doesn't look like it's implemented) - there's a 'versions' in properties but it's never populated.
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I think VMS had this a very long time ago and it worked well - however the underlying problem with anything like this is that your disks fill up with stuff you don't need. The answers are - good backups and applications like CVS for situations where you want it.
NTFS's alternate streams (Score:5, Informative)
(For those that don't know: a file can have multiple bodies, and a directory can have file bodies too. You can do "notepad C:\WINDOWS:holycrap.txt" to put a stream on the WINDOWS directory.)
Viruses hide in alternate streams. Backup software forgets alternate streams. Web servers and browsers forget alternate streams. FTP servers and clients forget alternate streams.
When next you are running out of disk space, perhaps it is an alternate stream! The file size shown in Windows explorer does not show the alternate streams.
If you really want this load of crap on Linux though... see the user_xattr mount option, which you may set via
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Viruses hide in files too. If there was better support for them, they could be as visible there as they are in files. Part of the question I'm asking is why isn't that support there.
Backup software forgets alternate streams. Web servers and browsers forget alternate streams. FTP servers and clients forget alternate streams.
Again, lack of tool support, not a problem with the concept. (In the case of FTP servers, you almost HAVE to forget about the alternate streams (or seria
I can keep going... (Score:5, Insightful)
The notation used on Windows is... interesting. If you are in D:\ with a file called C, does C:foo refer to a stream on D:\C or to a file called foo in the current directory of the C drive?
On a Linux or MacOS system, all characters except '/' and '\0' are valid in filenames, so we have nothing to spare. No, you can't steal the ':'.
Today I can copy a file with the dd command. I can copy a file using the cat command and shell redirection. Multi-forked files would lose data.
It looks like you need a directory... why not use one? This is how MacOS X apps work.
There are fundamental difficulties with on-disk data structures related to fragmentation and bloat. You add complexity for little gain.
Do these extra streams get permission bits? Can you solidly justify your choice?
Can a stream have a stream? If not, why the limitation?
Can I move a stream from one file to another? Can I move a stream to be just a regular file? Can I move a file into another file, to become an extra stream?
Why should everything become more complex (buggy, slow, insecure, confusing, etc.) for this barely-useful feature?
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Yes, I once thought this way, granted 10 MB hard-drives were better than sex back then.
Of course the FBI/CIA/NSA/DHS all feel the same way, that the typical user OS should never, ever forget something completely.
There's nothing like the look on an end-user's face when you show them a 2 year history of everything on and off their hard-drive;
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Seriously? (Score:2)
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Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the "Folders" tool on the left is too hard to use. Take a look at his picture, if he just clicked on the "Folders" link on the left he would have a nice, easy to navigate tree right there. Yes, the address bar's drop-down is a sort of history. As for the web sites, mine seem to spawn a web browser (Firefox even) just fine.
Again, the author shows his ignorance. Just click on the breadcrumb of where you want to go, ta-da! you're now there. Granted it's not a button, but it's infinitely more useful. Not only can I go up one level with one click I can go up n levels with one click.
This one I will give him is a wash. The built in search rocks. And personally, I'm used to <Win>+R to open the run dialog. <Win>+R then 'c:' still gets me an explorer window at c:\. Though I tend to use <Win>+E and then using the folder tree to get to the c:\, but to each their own. My major complaint with this is that shutting down has changed for me. I used to use <Win>, U, S, <Enter> to shut down. That's gone now, now I just hit the power button on my laptop.
This one I'll give him. Changing IP addresses is now buried yet another layer deeper. You had to dig enough in XP. This "Network and Sharing Center" is a bit annoying. Though one thing it does have going for it is that you can quickly tell whether you are sharing folders or not, and control it from there. Overall, more of a "meh" than a problem.
And, we're back to stupidity. There is a little box in the upper left hand corner of the Explorer window, oddly labeled "search", it's even visible in some of his screenshots. Type a string of letters in, and Presto! Vista goes and finds any file with the applicable search string (it even checks inside Word, Excel and text documents.)
This is another one I'll give him, copying and the associated network issues are a problem MS needs to fix. For the entire OS to seize up because a network location is unreachable is just stupid.
Overall the author of the article manages to just show that he's only touched Vista long enough to be annoyed with the changes, and not get used to them. I've been running Vista since RC1, and excepting driver support which sucked in the release candidate, but that's to be expected, I've generally liked Vista. Most of the complaints I have heard are either ill-informed or just downright wrong. That's not to say that there aren't still issues with Vista. Driver support still sucks, the network hang-ups should really be fixed (or at least give me a cancel button for when I know I mistyped), changing security and network settings are now buried one layer deeper in almost all cases, and getting used to the security pop-up takes some doing. Though, in defense of the last one, this is something that people have been asking for; just running everything as a local administrator is insane, you wouldn't run Linux as root all the time would you? One thing that Vista does lack in this regard is a non-admin way of viewing settings that should require admin level rights to change. I'd like to be able to view the Computer Management snap-in without running it as admin.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the same time, there is still a valid criticism here. First, why change a perfectly working UI by not only moving the previous functionality to somewhere completely different and unconnected to the old location, but then using the old location for something else instead of removing it?
Secondly, why is there a web history in the open/save dialog at all? Can anyone think of a remotely plausable use case where this would be helpful?
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
But still, how is someone supposed to know what the 'search' field does? It's not intuitive that the search string will actually search the contents of a file. Plus, having a look at his screenshot of the search dialog, it's bad interface design having the search field separated from the rest of the search criteria. There's very little visual indication that they're all related.
He also raises a very good point about the broken search feature in XP SP2. Once, I tried finding a string in a directory tree of php files. The search function found nothing, so I assumed that there were no files that contained the string. I was wrong. The string was in one of the files, but the windows search feature did not bother looking inside php files. That cost me many hours of time, until I finally came back and searched files by hand. I was extremely pissed at Microsoft, and was wishing wholeheartedly that I had easy access to 'grep'.
The blog author seems to indicate that this is still broken in Vista. If it is, then there is legitimate concern here.
Already testing SP1? (Score:4, Insightful)
[1] No I do not count the corporate edition released in Nov because it was simply a stunt to claim to have shipped in 06. They knew full well no same corporate IT dept would do anything other than begin testing with a version they would consider the 'final beta'.
One Site. Three slashdot links. (Score:5, Funny)
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Why not to get Vista? (Score:2, Interesting)
2: Ubuntu. It's even free.
3: OSX was out in 2000, Vista is 6 years behind the state of the art.
4: Wired for DRM, your computer is no longer fully under your control... muses... Was it ever with Windows.
5: It costs money. See #2.
6: Massive monoculture bad juju. Perfect for virus/trojan/worm writers. Hell, even evolution produced sexuality to avoid monocultures, that's how good divers
Not to nitpick (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why not to get Vista? (Score:5, Insightful)
_______
I'll give you 5 (statement of fact) and 6 (I agree) but the rest of this is wrong, unrealistic or just plain trolling (and pretty badly given your low UID)
1: Wrong. It does have new features. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
2: Unrealistic. Retraining costs, software, utter nigthmare to get it to work on some laptops (I've tried personally). Not possible for gamers. I love linux and have used several distros, and Ubuntu is very, very good but I can't send Mark Shuttleworth the bill for the time I spent fixing things or hunting for solutions in forums. I don't really mind the time and can actually get things to work the way I wan't but a lot of people cannot. I do have a Windows XP desktop and I have had significantly fewer problems with it than my debian box in lab or my zenwalk laptop.
3: Trolling a) So? b) Vista copies several features in OS X c) I can't buy it off the shelf d) Limited games and software - also see 4)
4: Wrong - I agree the DRM is principally to ensure a monopoly in the longterm (I argued this yesterday - see comment history) but it is still exactly as invasive as the content provider requires. OS X will require the same content controls, as will any Linux player to play commercial HD content. Several Linux distros support the TPM yet I don't hear anyone yelling about it.
5: Statement of fact. A lot of things do. Like I said I cannot send Mark Shuttleworth a bill for my time. Linux is free as in speech and maybe avaialble free as in beer but the cost of drinking that beer isn't being fully factored in here.
6: I cannot disagree. C'est la vie. We can all point fingers and you can yell at people to change to OS X/some linux but they aren't going to. I prefer helping them get their windows boxes more secure.
7: I don't see how your point 7 relates to 2 at all. Are you arguing that the retraining costs are offset by the free OS? See 5.
8: Trolling. Most people are getting Vista with a new computer and are junking old systems irrespective. Also you don't have to junk it at all just because you choose to upgrade. I've a 7 year old Thinkpad that happily runs vector.
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Given 1 there are quite a few reasons to upgrade to vista (and I don't carea bout anything on the top of that page. ASLR and UAC, however annoying it is, itself make it worth it. PatchGuard, irrespective of how the antivirii companies feel is also a great idea. Should these have been there ages ago. Sure. Is linux more secure anyway. Sure. Are people going to change. Nope. Too much depends on Windows and migrating to another OS is not an option for several buisness/gamers and just plain old users. However you feel about that and how MS got their monopoly, it is simply the current situation and is not going to change.
Re:Why not to get Vista? (Score:5, Interesting)
2. Vista is a nightmare to get to work on quite a few laptops, desktops, workstations, and everything else. Something about a total lack of useable drivers for a large amount of hardware. Ubuntu, on the other hand, just worked for everything I threw it on, but definitely had rough edges on a few laptops. I made sure that it worked on my hardware before any of it was purchased. I won't waste money on ATI hardware, so Vista is right out, for example.
4. My Linux install only implements the DRM on DVDs so far as to completely circumvent it. Seeing as to how Vista would attempt to disable my hardware instead, they don't seem equivalent. Most of the non-US world doesn't really give a damn about how the RIAA/MPAA wants to control all of the computers in the solar system, but would still like to watch movies and listen to music. MS just made it easier for all of those rotten groups to gain ownership over *your* computer, and they didn't have to do that. They certainly could have skipped *paying* for the "privilege". I know that I won't.
5. I have spent an order of magnitude more time fixing/working around Windows than I spent learning everything I know about UNIX and its derivatives. I would absolutely *love* to bill Microsoft for the time that I have wasted on their software.
7. The GP point was that if you have to retrain for Vista (and you certainly would have to), why not just save the money and migrate to Ubuntu. If you didn't notice, Vista is a lot different than Win2000 or WinXP.
As potentially good as security enhancements, such as UAC could be, Microsoft managed to screw such a simple thing up. There are far too many mundane things that trigger UAC, and MS implemented the entire feature in a complete half-assed fashion. Most users are going to turn it off, and it is useless in corporate deployments. Something like PatchGuard is also a great idea, if you didn't end up needing AV, add-in firewalls, and spyware scanners anyway.
For what it's worth, people like you are *why* we get stuck with the status quo. Quit being a short-sighted fool and put some effort into the day after tomorrow. MS is going to collapse eventually, just as every other monopoly has. Either their software will become completely unusable, or a better competitor will take the market, or perhaps the die through regulation. Whatever it is, it will happen eventually. Your mindset will put you, and whoever depends on you, firmly behind everyone else, hemmoraging cash.
High-end graphics cards are a fool's game (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck with that. The rest of us will be buying a better card for 1/4 the price in two years, and still have it installed well before the number of published games that really take advantage of DX10 hits double figures. And our drivers won't crash the whole PC at random intervals, either.
Seriously, buying the latest and greatest graphics card is a fool's game, and has been for probably five years or more now. Lack of game requirements and poor quality early drivers mean that you won't get the best out of such a card for several years after you get it. By that time, the rest of your system spec will be struggling to keep up, and even the budget graphics cards will support the same API standards.
Point for comparison: I last built a PC around 4 years ago. At the time, I went for high-end pretty much throughout. For the processor, RAM, and hard drive it was well worth the extra: they gave a direct advantage in things I could do with the PC at the time. However, my Radeon 9700 Pro (replaced after 6 months with a 9800 Pro because of the power supply issues) that was pretty much state-of-the-art at the time has never been used to its full potential. The games I bought it for, which would really benefit from DX9, weren't released for another year or two in reality. Today it's actually that then-high-end graphics card that is the biggest limiting factor in running more recent games (along with, ironically, simple things like not installing a DVD drive, which was a luxury item back then). I might as well have bought a cheap 'n' cheerful Radeon 9500 or then-mid-range nVidia card, and used the significant financial savings to upgrade the graphics card a couple of years later when the games could use it, spending less money overall, winding up with better kit, and suffering no practical loss of functionality in between.
In any case, in the time frame we're talking about, it's quite possible that the whole DRM house-of-cards will be crashing down around poor Microsoft's quivering OS dept. and execs will be running around trying to distance themselves from the mistakes underlying Vista. That's likely to require a significant reworking of the whole multimedia framework within the OS, which in turn is likely to do weird stuff to DX. There's still a lot of potential in DX9 that most new releases don't tap, and a lot of the PC gamer market will be on XP rather than Vista for some time to come. With this sort of environment, I would think DX10 is a pretty unappealing target for game developers right now, so I wouldn't be rushing out to upgrade things just to support it.
not a llort (Score:5, Funny)
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with Vista file transfer performance? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Vista box for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Color iBook G3, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Vista compatible heavy duty hardware, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Explorer will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on my Vista beast, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Vista machine that has run faster than my old C64, despite the latest dual core goodness and a $400 video card in this Vista box. My TRS-80 color computer with 16 KB (that's "kilo", not "mega") of ram runs faster than this core 2 duo machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Vista is a superior OS.
Vista addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Vista over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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I should add in my experience, XP is slower than 2000 in transerring files, particularly from flash cards & such. So it wouldn't surprise me if this turns out to be an OS issue.
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Re:not a llort (Score:5, Informative)
This is a joke based on an old anti-Mac OS troll that used to get posted here on
This should be +funny, but I guess a lot of people don't get the joke anymore and think you're serious.
Here's the Original BTW:
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
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IT'S FUNNY, LAUGH!
lameness filter is lame
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Re:not a llort (Score:4, Funny)
This is a joke based on an old anti-Paper troll that used to get posted here on
This should be +funny, but I guess a lot of people don't get the joke anymore and think you're serious.
Here's the Original BTW:
In addition, during this image transfer, Guttenberg's press will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even tic-tac-toe is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various pieces of paper, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a paper that has run faster than its papyrus counterpart, despite the paper's higher linen content architecture. My clay tablet with week old clay runs faster than this paper at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that paper is a superior medium.
Paper addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use paper over other faster, cheaper, more stable mediums.
mod parent up - learn to discern insightful (Score:2)
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Start backing up your data now.
Any system which chugs along for that long on a 17MB file either has some serious problems, or a dialog box hiding behind an active window waiting on a response. I'm running Vista on a laptop and while the file copy is slow, it's nothing like that.
Article /.ted (Score:2, Informative)
The company has put out a call for "customers and partners (to) actively test and provide feedback on Windows Vista SP1 to help us prepare for its release in the second half of CY07 (calendar year 2007)."
Microsoft hasn't released details of exactly what changes will be wrought in Vista SP1, which has been assigned the codename 'Fiji
Not so much Vista, but 3rd party apps. (Score:4, Interesting)
-Novell has yet to set a timetable for a Novell client capable of installing on Vista.
-AutoCad 2007 no timetable yet
-Lotus Notes client 7.01 (no Official support from IBM, though seems to work fine)
-Symantec Antivirus (need to upgrade to version 10.0)
Those are the biggies for our campus (that we've found so far....)
Check out the below - im horrified (Score:5, Interesting)
5. Driver support -- Key hardware like video and sound is crippled at the moment -- while Nvidia is working furiously to get a stable driver for the 8800 out by the 30th, there's still no SLI support for any of the Nvidia range. And thanks to the removal of hardware accelerated 3D sound in Vista, Creative's popular DirectSound based EAX no longer works at all, muting this feature for just about all gaming titles on the market today. Creative is in the process of coding a layer for its drivers to translate EAX calls to the OpenAL API which is seperate from Vista, but going by past experience with Creative drivers we won't see these any time soon.
not only nvidia stuff, but eax too. horrible as i got a creative xtreme music card to listen to 500+ classic music pieces, not to mention quality gaming sound. what kind of lack of foresight is this on part of ms ?
"DRM -- And to a lesser degree TPM -- were made for the RIAAs and MPAAs of this world, and the even tighter integration of copy protection mechanisms and 'Windows Rights Management' into vista are nothing more than a liability to you, the user."
well, this was the main shit that vista was delayed a few years anyway. im happy with my current situation as it is.
"half the limit compared to XP for Home Basic and Premium on how many machines can connect to yours for sharing, printing and accessing the Internet;"
i can say that loads of small businesses in turkey will be yelling the hell outta ms representatives on this one.
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Further, once Microsoft's DRM system has been beta-tested on HD content like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, it will be used to lock down software sales to prevent piracy and eventually make us all rent our software.
If you think the RIAA is big into the subscription model, how
I don't what to say - aaaaaiiiiiiiii? (Score:2)
what, no QA dept (Score:3, Insightful)
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At the company I work for, we always plan on releasing a patch 3-6 months after a major release. It is simply unrealistic to assume that the product is going to work perfectly with no flaws.
ME 2.0 (Score:2)
What about XP SP3 (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if Vista is broken? Most computer users will not see it on their systems for years. Windows XP is still "good enough" for most everybody, except... The hours of patching and updating after a SP2 install.
Microsoft: Are you listening? This user wants a consolidation of all the XP fixes into one service pack.
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Any publicity is good publicity (Score:3)
My work PC is a 2.8GHz P4. Not high end but typically over 40% of it's processor is taken up doing god knows what security wise. There's "service" after "service" designed to bolt on what should have been there from the start but won't ever bet. Put Sparcos, tinted glass and 20in spinners on a piece of crap and it'll still handle like crap and throw you out the windshield the first time it hits the curb.
So it'll be with Vista evidently. We can whine as we wish- anyone here making purchasing decisions? Anyone here said no, I'm making the decisions here and we're moving this business or University or town to Linux or OSX or anything but? If we're not a position to make that sort of decision in our little corner of the world, we're rocks Vista's going to crush into the pavement.
number 1 reason people should stick to XP (Score:4, Interesting)
If we hijack the Windows bandwagon from Microsoft, then Microsoft will be like a BIOS vendor when it comes to Windows. Anyone remember "IBM compatible PC"?
If almost everybody stays with XP and DirectX 9 and doesn't move on to Vista, then Windows XP+DX9 could become a defacto standard that even Microsoft can't get rid of! Just like Intel can't get rid of x86 - they tried and failed with their Itanic, and when IBM tried to switch to MCA.
Then the jobs of people doing Wine, Crossover office, Cedega and more become a lot easier - they have a fixed target instead of multiple moving targets.
Be realistic and ignore the fanboys out there, there are many valid reasons for wanting Windows. XP will continue to make a good substitute for Vista, unless more and more people start switching to Vista.
There really is no Linux substitute for Windows yet, BUT if enough people stick to XP, it becomes far more likely for there to eventually be one.
Just a look at Vista will tell you that Microsoft is no longer improving things significantly or meaningfully, so we might as well freeze Windows, and be able to spend more time and resources on innovating elsewhere.
So everyone, start telling Dell, HP et all to preload and sell XP instead of Vista, and tell your friends to insist on XP instead of Vista.
There are already other valid reasons to prefer XP to Vista, for example: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_
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That's what most of businesses are going to do for a long time; the reason is that XP works well enough, is already customized to the specifics of the business, supports tons of essential apps, and is very well provided with drivers. There is simply no business reason to downgrade to Vista. If anyone starts talking "Aero", it's not going to work on business machines because of many reasons, in particular because IT departments don't buy screaming hot video GPUs to run Excel.
Just delay the fu**er again (Score:3, Insightful)
WinXP works well in its current stage, for what I need it to - work stuff, and play at home. Haven't tried any of them on the RCs of Vista because I couldn't install it in the frist place. Seems like Vista did not like my SATA HDD. Talk about lack of hardware drivers.. it was RC and all.. but if XP works on it, shouldn't its successor work too?
Deja-vu (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm using Vista and I LOVE it! (Score:5, Funny)
Did I mention it's also runs blogging software without any problems?
Vista is a clusterfuck - from _my_ blog (Score:5, Interesting)
Being a diligent sort of bloke I downloaded a release candidate version of Vista Business edition from the usual sources and proceeded to test it on the main box.
The "main box" is currently an AMD 64 bit jobbie, A-bit mobo, 2 gig of Mushkin, WD raptor HD, so not the absolute latest and greatest, but no slouch either.
In common with all versions of Windows this install (XP SP2) picks up "cruft" and after about 6 months the only real cure is a reinstall of Windows.
Knowing it was a dying install I thought I'd play with AutoPatcher, which patched everything sure enough, but made things around the edges even more flaky, and in particular made the ethernet connection unstable, this then was the candidate for Vista.
Installation / Upgrading was NOT straightforward, I had to manually uninstall Kaspersky anti virus, Spybot S&D, and two MS windows updates, one was powershell, I forget now what the other one was.
I tried a virgin install as opposed to an upgrade, rather than uninstall all the above, and got a BSOD at the first installer reboot, clearly a hardware / driver issue.
Nota Bene, this is hardly exotic or just released hardware, nor is it obsolete hardware, so immediately the tables are turned between Windows and Linux, Debian will simply install, Vista will not. Don't even ask about trying to get hardware drivers for Vista
So I went back to the upgrade path, uninstalled the software that Vista was moaning about, and tried again.
Well, it worked, but.......
This installer very clearly said on the splash screens two extremely worrying sentences.
During install your computer will restart several times - it did.
Installation may take several hours - it took about 2.
This is NOT Linux, so taking the upgrade path and the multiple reboots mean you cannot use the computer for anything during the upgrade process. I am not a coder, but the fact that Vista STILL requires several reboots during installation speaks volumes about the fundamental workings of Vista, this is not a "professional" Operating System.
The astonishingly slow upgrade times, bear in mind this is a 64 bit AMD CPU on a good A-bit mobo with 2 gig of Mushkin (best memory money can buy) and 10k RPM Western Digital Raptor hard disks, beggars belief, XP SP2 will install on this box in 25 minutes, Debian + about 1000 applications will install in about 15 minutes, Vista took TWO BLOODY HOURS, and I must say again, unlike Linux, totally rendered the box unusable in the interim.
So, eventually, the Vista upgrade / install is complete, and it boots into the OS.
Before I go any further, I must give this some perspectiive, I have been using computers since whenever, punched card on mainframes, 8 bit DIY stuff at home, not quite Altair but damn close, and I've used most operating systems too, the various DOSes, the odd bit of CP/M and OS2, Sinclair speccies, Tandy TRS 80, Commodore PET, Apple ][, the 16 bit NMS machines from the likes of Philips, Atari, BBC and Acorn RISC, MIPS based Cobalt servers when they came out, DEC, etc etc etc.
The point of this comment is to reassure the reader than the mere sight of something different does not give rise to "oh noes! this is the suxxor!" shit, different is "OK, let's see what you've got." and of course assuming that whoever wrote this OS will, like me, have some idea of what went before and therefore have a good idea about what are good ideas, what works, what doesn't, etc etc etc.
In 1995 the Acorn RISCOS 3.5 had full screen font anti-aliasing so you could read 8 point text on a 14 inch CRT, it had a Pause and Resume dialogue button on the file copy / move function, and would not fall over as soon as it encountered a file that could not be copied or moved, and would simply get on with moving or copying the rest
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nope, cos if you did you would know that Windows does indeed pick up "cruft"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruft [wikipedia.org]
Very, very, very, very few windows applications install nicely and uninstall 100% leaving a system exactly as it was before, registry bloat ensues.
If your point of view were true, there would not be several commercial applications designed specifically to ensure that win
Image-based install (Score:2)
I built a linux install CD a few years ago, and most tasks were automated, it had to:
Those 5 steps completed in under 5 minutes (I timed it) compared to half an hour or more using the debian installer and apt to install one package at a time.
My "source" for the filesystem images, what I call
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rather than slowly copy each file across to your system as it works out what you need it copies an image of the OS containing all the files, thus significantly increasing the speed of an install. nothing new here except that now windows can do it instead of needing 3rd party imaging software.
So ? How is this useful and a fantastic new feature for the millions of users who get os'es installed by a techie and use it for over 1-1.5 years ? i dont think that vista requires regular reinstallations so this feature is useless for mainstream user ?
no, it allows you to actually click on any component of the path and navigate to that, so this is instead of having to have shortcuts on the display or having to step through the paths.
directory site navigation like linking ? this is some fantastic, exciting feature ? we already have shortcuts for what we often use and need swift access, so what use is this when browsing some deep folder once in a week or even month ?
ahhhh so just because someone can use a free encryption program this is irrelevant? name one free program that easily allows you to encrypt your entire harddrive content including the OS and is easy to use?
tel
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