HardOCP Spends 30 Days With Vista 662
boyko.at.netqos writes "Hardocp.com has published "30 days with Vista" — with the same author from "30 days with Linux" doing the evaluation. And he doesn't like it. From the article: 'Based on my personal experiences with Vista over a 30 day period, I found it to be a dangerously unstable operating system, which has caused me to lose data [...] Any consideration of the fine details comes in second to that one inescapable conclusion. This is an unstable operating system.'"
Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
Going to green text on a white background for a "Yes, I want to" or "No, I don't" was a bad UI choice.
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Is there no ability to set the color scheme used? Perhaps there's a better choice? Granted the one you're using sounds bad as a default selection.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Informative)
The biggest thing I've liked about Vista is a graphical installer (which, admittedly, you should only have to use once), good support for hardware driver updates (not the drivers themselves, necessarily, just going to find updates), etc. Of course, I've been using OSX as my primary machine for almost three years, so I got used to those things while using XP only to play WoW with a much better graphics card than my PB G4.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The first thing I do with a fresh WinXP install is shut off that gawdawful Luna (?) desktop and revert to something that looks more like Win2K. Less space used by UI widgets means more space for program data, and it doesn't look so cartoonish.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't mine, just something I found with a Google search:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Cur
"EnableBalloonTips"=dword:00000000
I carry it on a USB stick, so I can run it whenever I use someone else's machine. I don't know how people use Windows with all those pop-ups (kind of like browsing the web with IE6, I suppose).
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Informative)
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I always though it was based on this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/teletubbies/ [bbc.co.uk]
Over the hills, and far away....
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't forget that we're comparing the recently released Vista to XP, which has been out for years. Of course XP is going to be winning popularity contests right now. Same thing would have happened when XP was released if it wasn't following up ME. I've worked with people who want to keep their Windows 98 machines, for crying out loud. But very few people move backward from a mature OS. There may still be people who like Windows 98, but there aren't people who use Windows XP, and say "Gee, I wish I was using 98 instead." So shall it be with Vista when it matures.
Searches (Score:4, Interesting)
"WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973."
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.htm
Re:Searches (Score:4, Insightful)
Since search was posited as a big thing that Vista does right, I'm expressing my non-impressedness. Nothing to do with WinFS.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Informative)
I've never found a use for the indexing and search functions that people are happily touting with Vista, Google Desktop, and others... Instead, I use a logical directory naming convention that makes looking for what I need a simple matter of choosing the directory that has what I need.
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Why do you think Gmail works?
My first guess would be "good design and coding", but it appears I was wrong; you appear to be telling us it works because of a nebulous philosophy of "search instead of arrange logically."
It is based on the philosophy that it is easier to search a large group than to organize it along the way. (Of course, it IS being organized along the way, just not by the user.)
The day that a computer can organize my documents and email better than I can is the day I quit the IT field. I'm not saying you shouldn't trust a PC to do that, but I'm fairly well convinced that at current, a human can do it better.
While I might like my desk organized, if someone ELSE organizes it FOR me the
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Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Insightful)
> NVidia & ATI had their drivers polished
Rest assured that that (i.e. user-experience after the user has bought it) was very low on the list.
With enough cynism, your posting could be marked as "funny".
Licensing 6.0 was all what was driving the release-date.
A lot of businesses signed the Licensing 6.0 agreement back in
Those contracts ran... 3 years, which brings us to X-mas 2006, when Vista was released to OEMs and large-accounts, so that all the CIOs who signed those contracts didn't look like complete fools to their beancounters, who are still using the same desktop and the same MS-Office they have used for three years.
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Of course it isn't quite as bad now that I know how to turn off all the useless crap that supposedly made XP better. By the time that most power users are done tweaking XP, it isn't that far off of Win2K anymore, which by the way, I think you'd like a heck of a lot better than XP.
The one (only) place I have liked XP more than '98/2K/Linux has been on laptops. Part of that is because the vendor has a lot of Windows sp
What is "intuitive" anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a better measure of the effectiveness of the UI would be that given 2-3 weeks to familiarize yourself with the interface, can you perform the same tasks you used to in less time. ie, is it efficient once you overcome the learning curve?
(On a tangent, I think the Gnome dev team has been wrestling with this problem. Trying to follow a design process which they believe is more efficient once you commit to using in the way they intended instead of allowing rampant customization. Obviously, that attitude doesn't work for everybody.)
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Here's a little Microsoft -> Programmer list of terms I compiled:
alpha = non-existant
beta = alpha
Full Retail edition = beta
SP1 = Full Retail edition
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason this is a nonsensical argument is that windows vista does not provide any features substantially in advance of windows xp. Windows 95 does DRAMATICALLY more than Windows 3.1.
In fact, Microsoft claimed that Windows Vista would be the fastest windows yet. But in spite of its limited improvements in functionality - which are almost all supposedly speed-related - it is dramatically slower.
If you install Windows XP on a system that formerly had Windows 2000, the only setback in terms of performance is the stupid fisher-price GUI (which can be turned off) and the fact that it consumes more memory. Programs in fact often DO run faster on XP than on 2k. This is not true of Vista, which also substantially breaks backwards compatibility in the bargain. Everything is slower on Vista.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Informative)
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So to be brief about it, Vista is good for people who want to learn to do more multitasking, because the interface so easily supports jumping from one application to another, while the increased slowness of each single application encourages the user to make those jumps. You can probably easily work on three or four different projects at once, AND keep up on Slashdot, since you will no longer be able to focus all your attention on any one thing, like those cavemen of 1960s who put a man on the Moon.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with his interpretation (and yours) is that most of the time when a desktop system is being used at 100%, it's being used that way by a single application. Rendering an image, playing a game, something like that. So the assertion is basically that Vista, which is not a server OS, is only slower when you need the speed the most.
You can make any kind of declarations you want if you forget the way the system will be used. This is precisely Microsoft's game and I am dismayed to see so many slashdotters joining in. It reminds me of Sony's PS2 specifications. Not only could the system not push as many triangles as they said it could, but it definitely couldn't do it during a game.
Not only is Vista not able to be secure or stable, but it can't deliver superior performance either.
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Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Insightful)
Low priority I/O makes it so a lot of tasks like backup, indexing and optimizing the disk can be done in the background with little to no impact to foreground apps.
As far as application performance, you can dumb down vista's ui, but even with Aero on I really honestly don't notice any performance difference between Vista and XP.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Informative)
Here is a quote from 1998 abou this issue:
"Use buffered or retained mode windows. Users will perceive better performance than non-retained windows.
This will also improve virtual memory performance. When a non retained window is uncovered, the application that owns it must be swapped into memory in order to redraw the window. If there are many applications running but idle and there are many overlapping windows, this can become a serious performance hit. Retained and buffered windows have a "backing store" owned by the window server. The window server can then draw the uncovered window without any help from the window's owning application.
As a cool example of this, use a Windows 95 or Windows NT machine with relatively low RAM and run Microsoft Word and some other application like Corel Draw. Open many documents in both applications. Maximize both applications. Then minimize the application that is on top. You can wait minutes while the virtual memory system thrashes the hard disk while repainting all of those windows, and all you did was minimize an application!"
It only took Microsoft 15 years to catch up.
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I don't think this is true actually - in a lot of ways Vista is quicker. For instance when I turned on my Vista machine today it was ready to go in literally seconds.
You didnt TURN ON your Vista machine today - not in the normal sense... you had it resume from something akin to hibernation (S3/S4, hibernate, etc). A feature (that's old) that has problems on various systems, while oddly working flawlessly on others. Next time, select "Turn Off" from the menu and then restart... it is excruciatingly slow o
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I took a look at the Win95 effort to make MSDOS look pretty and then installed linux - initially because I was too cheap to install OS/2 or buy a Mac. Win95 was a great steaming pile of garbage. NT, Win2k and Server2003 are a completely different story. XP is too resource hungry for my liking with no benefit over Win2k if you have drivers for both (it's very rare not to have drivers for both).
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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He means it sucks down RAM like its going out of style. I just got a new PC (Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, Good video card, Striped RAID 0) and with absolutely nothing running Vista Business sucked up 35-40% of my RAM. Thats sitting still, doing nothing, with nothing running.
All drivers for Vista are lousy. They have serious memory leak issues, and when they start to have problems Vista disables them. I gave it a few weeks (and many d
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:5, Informative)
If the machine is sitting still and doing nothing, it shouldn't matter if the OS uses 100% of available memory, maybe for pre-caching the next chunks of data it think you'll ask for, or running a background index process against your filesystem.
The issue is when you start to add application load to the machine -- does the OS release memory it's using for those "idle" tasks so that apps can use it, or is it greedy?
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Insightful)
I just bough a brand new computer. I'm impressed. Vista works pretty flawlessly. Here is to denounce the FUD:
1) All my old programs work without a hitch
2) I *rarely* get a UAC prompt. If I do, it's pretty much for admin-only things anyway (which is the correct way to handle elevating privelages) like installing software or using the control panel. Lest you forget you also must be root to install packages with Yum or Apt. There is no prompt for using the calender or other BS like getting UAC prompts willy-nilly
3) It's not slow
4) Games work fine. I have an ATI x1300 and it plays the games fine
The only thing which is a pain is Vista's file manager. Even though there is an option to set all folders to use the same settings and view as the current directory, it doesn't do what it's told. Therefore, you will always be in one directory--say, with the details view, and the next directory is the tile view. A real big pain and more annoying than you think if you frequently manage files.
Btw, don't give me any BS about how "sure it works fine because you bought Vista pre-installed." Every computer from now on will be pre-installed so your issue is moot AND my computer is using the same damn drivers one would find by downloading them off their respective vendor's sites (and thereby installed by the oh-so-difficult clicking of next > next > finish).
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem is people always have been used to running as admin or equiv ANYWAY. So a sudden difference bothers them. Also it fairly blindly assumes that you need admin for any installer, which is not true.
It is compared to WinXP on similar hardware.
Vista sucks for gaming if you have better things to do than buy a highend system. I've had no real pressing reason to upgrade my desktop, particularly in the "gaming" direction. But even fairly recent games run playably in WinXP on my aging desktop with an AMD Athlon XP 1700+, 512 MB PC133 RAM, and a GeForce FX5200 128MB PCI. On Vista this was decidedly not the case, Empire Earth 2 ran pitifully, whereas I could actually play and enjoy it on WinXP.
I agree there's a huge FUD machine pounding on Vista, but a lot of it is the same kind of Linux FUD I see spread... isolated, very real gripes by a small but noisy population blown out of proportion into generalities. It happens with introducing any new tech, this is hardly shocking.
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"downloading them off their respective vendor's sites"
(sorry - I couldn't resist. Good post tho)
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Insightful)
an OS for the masses would make it completely transparent to the user what is being done with memory. The user 'from the masses' doesn't care what's being used for what. As long as things run responsively and quickly, it's a win. There is Zero need for a up front and obvious to the average PC user exactly where each byte of ram is going. All they need is a "hey, you're trying to do a bit too much all at once" message when they get close to running out of overhead. Maybe show a pie chart with app.name (NOT the process name/number) and percent of mem used, and give them the chance to close down something BEFORE the system grinds to an unresponsive halt.
Re:Does Vista do anything right? (Score:4, Informative)
Okay you boot up some generic desktop OS and the OS has loaded and is functional. Would you rather it:
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That is to say, Vista imposes a large and pointless cost on the vast majority of users for the purchase of "well supported hardware".
Vista is not worth it. (Score:3, Informative)
On a
The editor undermines the entire piece (Score:2)
How about . . . (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Instability? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And even using the 'dodgy' nvidia 8800 drivers hasnt caused me any issues. Games run fast and fluid, and I haven't encountered any app with major compatibility problems.
Yes, Instability!!!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
And if it is, Vista is absolutely, unacceptably unstable. It should simply not be possible for an application to cause a spontaneous reboot without prompting the user. And in that context, your more positive experience is pretty meaningless: you don't have any applications that cause this problem now. But Murphy's Law says that you wi
Not so for me (Score:2, Funny)
My experience (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My experience (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.
I don't like Vista.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yawn (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because Microsoft released all of them too soon. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know nobody believes it, but there was a time when beta versions were called betas, and Version 1.0 meant a product that was finally finished, SQA-ed, and working.
Users have a right to a version 1.0 that works. Shrugging your shoulders and saying "hey, what do you expect, it's version 1.0" wouldn't be tolerable in any other product.
It's the Drivers... (Score:2)
Windows update still tells me that they have an updated sound driver
My Vistaring (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, some of this is down to the software manufacturers for not being on the ball, some of it is due to things like MS moving all the IIS stuff so that older apps can no longer find it. Not to mention the fact that the Exchange 2003 tools are a Microsoft Product and they're not intending to provide an installation method under Vista *at all*. Even the Exchange 2007 tools have been looking a bit flaky where Vista is concerned.
Vista! 80% as good as the next guy! (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't used Vista at all yet, but for the sake of argument I will assume that this review is a good indication of Vista's quality: a bit less good than XP. Now I have used XP, extensively, and I have used Linux extensively, and in my judgment the quality of a distribution like Fedora or Ubuntu is about on par with the quality of XP. You get roughly the same number of annoyances, the same amount of flaky behavior, and the same number of breakages, some of which you can fix and some of which you can't.
With Vista, apparently I need to knock it down 10% or so from XP in terms of its quality. Plus (and this is a big one) it actively works against the user with intentional breakages. DVD burning tools that produce discs only readable on Vista? Come again? IE7 objects to downloads from Sourceforge? Nice. So I'll take off another 10% for these shenanigans. That means Vista is about 80% as good as Ubuntu.
Where did the billions of dollars and years of development go? Why can't Redmond put out an OS that is at least as good as the freebie alternative? They should be selling an OS that is dramatically better than anything else available. Why aren't they?
Why only 30 days? (Score:5, Funny)
Not to pile on, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
This computer dual boots XP, where this never happens. The RAID driver is exactly the same on both OS's so I blame Vista.
Re:Not to pile on, but... (Score:5, Funny)
This anti-piracy measure is a feature, friend. Surely only copyright infringers have large hard drives!
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http://www.flyingnerd.com/intel-raid-problem-under -windows-vista/ [flyingnerd.com]
Specifically, Vista does power management for desktop drives. This is good. XP did not. Unfortunately the drives are buggy and don't support it properly. You can disable it
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/28/dell_vista _raid/ [theregister.co.uk]
DVD compatibility problems? (Score:5, Informative)
This seems like a show-stopper to me for anyone wanting to exchange data with non-Vista users, especially if the default is to use the Vista-only format. The fact that I haven't heard this complaint before makes me suspicious that it's something unique to his setup, but not being a Windows user I have no basis to judge.
Re:DVD compatibility problems? (Score:5, Informative)
I always click advanced options on things but your right, most people wouldn't.
Beware latest XP updates (Score:4, Informative)
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Windows Vista for me... (Score:4, Interesting)
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unacceptable
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It takes time for software to catch up
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Re:Some random guy doesn't like Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Vista is not a first-release product, though. It is Windows NT Version 6.0.
After 15+ years of development, I would hope that the issues that surface with each new release would be relatively few and mild, even for major revisions like Vista.
Re:Some random guy doesn't like Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Self contradictory (Score:2)
Which is it? Vista commonly crashing because of unstable drivers or the OS being stable and usable? It can't be both.
(Yes, I run Vista, and no it has never crashed on me... I have the minimum featureset enabled though.)
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You can hold it against "Windows" when there are alternatives like OS X where
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So when the same driver that has been shipped to customers gets bundled with the OS, it goes from a driver problem to a software problem?
I call shenanigans.
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Funny)
"Btw, chances are it was a sound card driver - this is a moderately common problem, but it sure isn't the end of the world."
I agree, no one needs sound on a computer. That's why we have iPods.
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Informative)
There's a checkbox to turn that feature off, if you want to see BSODs, in the System control panel I believe. Or just check your Event Viewer when you have a mysterious reboot.
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need to be that smart to use the OS, something is wrong.
More to the point, if you need to be that smart to use the OS, wouldn't you rather use an OS that puts those smarts to use through powerful tools like shell scripting, built-in command-line accessible compilers, and more? I thought the whole point of using Windows was that anyone can use it. Tell somebody's grandma that she should debug her drivers, you know?
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Besides any talk about how you figure out it's the sound card driver, I think there's something wrong with the attitude that, "Windows is co
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a few driver issues with all OS software!
Now, since they are more or less equal, why use the one that cost you big money? Why use the OS that wants to report what you do and prevent you from playing your content?
Yes, I'm saying that if Dell and others shipped computers with some version of Linux pre-installed, it would be a very short time before everyone (nearly) was asking themselves why they should spend big dollars on MS software... assuming we get around/over the MS Tax. That is a problem that probably needs some investigation, perhaps legislative action.
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:4, Interesting)
I usually find that people who bitch about it use it exclusively. They mostly don't even understand just how complex a job it is that operating systems have to do.
Me? I use Linux most of the time, and have XP for games and other trivial stuff (if games are trivial). Linux is far ahead in the server arena, an pure number cruncher stakes (which is what I use it for), but still behind in the home user experience. Unfashionable as that statement is, its true. Yes there are all the pieces, but how many versions of Linux are there? Is the Linux Standard Base adopted across the board yet? Nope? Well stop whining, Linux isn't ready for the the mainstream desktop. It needs to standardise.
I don't plan to buy Vista, simply because it does nothing I need.
That hasn't stopped me saying some people I know should quit bitching and buy it. After all, since they use Microsoft stuff anyway, they might as well get the next incarnation.
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That said, a customized XP is also a useable desktop, especially given all the FOSS software out there that runs on Windows. It may not be my favorite choise of OS, b
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Windows isn't, either. How many different versions of Vista are there? And that's just Vista.
Look, if you have a real complaint about "Linux", either direct it at the kernel (and know what you're talking about) or direct it at a specific distro.
Otherwise, stop whining that you have *gasp* too much choice! If you really feel that way, get a Mac -- that way, you won't even be burdened with choice in hardware.
And i
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Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
"I'm not having problems; therefore, nobody else could be having any, either."
" This guy couldn't figure out which driver/piece of hardware was causing this instability in a MONTH?"
He was using it as a common user with OEM hardware. You're telling me that Joe Six-pack can troubleshoot a driver problem in any timeframe? Remember, MS is marketing this as a retail, for-the-masses OS. The review chose to review the machine as a typical end-user.
"Btw, chances are it was a sound card driver - this is a moderately common problem, but it sure isn't the end of the world."
So now you admit sound card drivers are a common problem? You're right, it's not the end of the world, but the reviewer did claim it was the end for a lot of his data -- which goes against the whole reason to use a computer in the first place -- to store your data.
"This isn't 1994 anymore. The arguments against MS for making unstable operating systems ended when NT was released. Since Windows 2000, MS has made stable operating systems that really are usable by the average joe without difficulty."
Except for the fact of this relatively common sound card driver bug causing crashes. You have openly admitted as much yourself. Sounds like 1994 all over again.
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Amusingly enough that's an often-used retort to people who claim Linux is not working for them for whatever reasons. But I guess here it's perfectly valid, right?
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
No. I should be directing these comments to you, because you are making logic errors in your argument.
The fact that you haven't had a crash doesn't 'refute' the author's experience. He had crashes, you didn't. These anecdotal pieces of evidence don't wipe each other out. Was the author lying to us, or making up his crash stories, simply because you never had a crash? No, that's silly. He had a bad experience with Vista, you didn't. Your story doesn't make him wrong, any more than his would make yours wrong. Only if he were lying or misrepresenting would that make his story wrong.
"Why don't you name me a single OS that won't become unstable with faulty drivers. "
Irrelevant. What we are talking about is how stable Vista is for the general public, on common hardware in typical scenarios. You claim never to have had a crash with any OS aside from DOS 6 -- so what? Does that mean no OS has ever crashed, except DOS 6? No, that's an over-generalization. Because you never had a problem, that doesn't mean that Windows ME wasn't a shitty, buggy, lock-up-and-crash-prone OS that should never have seen a retail shelf.
You have said yourself that there is a *common* problem with sound card drivers. We both agree that faulty drivers cause problems. But should it be a *common* problem, especially for MS' flagship product, released to the public? Shouldn't MS make better drivers, or only allow well-tested, signed drivers? If faulty drivers are a *common* problem, doesn't that show some problem in MS' development or distribution methods?
i've had BSOD with vista 64bit (Score:4, Interesting)
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Of course, everyone's mileage may vary. Also, I do not think a driver or hardware issue is unreasonable to extend into a month or more, especially if you consider end-users who have next to no technical skills. I refused to upgrade with my free upgrade from Dell after I read they refused to guarantee my h
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I like the plug-ins to browsers that replace flash with a button you click to enable flash for just that one part. it really scrubs out all those rotten ads.
Re:Sorry, couldn't RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. First, get this [mozilla.com] and this [mozilla.org]. Then try this URL [hardocp.com] to read it ad-free.
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Are you a shill, or are you telling lies for free?
The hardware was stable under heavier stress testing under both Windows XP and Linux.
Why, you didn't read it?
While we're on the subject, why shouldn't Quicktime work? It's just yet another Windows application.
Have not forgot - and still use Win2K (Score:3, Insightful)
I dual boot Debian and Win2K. Win2k is fast and stable, works with all my hardware, and runs all of my windows apps. The default interface is less cartoonish, and IMO more logical and functional. Win2K does not have that annoying authentication crappola. With Win2K, I don't have to learn a new interface.
I have no idea why people want to bother with XP, much less Vista. I assume