Microsoft Admits Vista Has "High Impact Issues"

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

Exactly how is it less usable then XP. They pretty much both work.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

While it's certainly not a disaster, cases such as this can hardly be denied.

I've also been struck by how, even with all the notifications I get in Vista, how annoying it is to find basic information. For example, in Windows XP you have a control panel called "Add or Remove Programs." While not elegant, it is clear. You know what that control panel's functionality is, no guessing. It adds and removes programs. The Vista version? "Programs and Features." Huh? What does that do? Well, you don't know from the name, other than it has something to do with well, programs and features. When you think about it, that rather covers the entire OS and everything you'd do on a computer. Yet "Add Hardware" is the same on both versions. In Windows XP, you set your display options using the "Display" control panel. That's nice and clear. Vista? It's buried in "Personalization." Because when I want to change my monitor resolution, that's exactly what pops into my head as an experienced Windows user: Personalization. Yet mouse settings, which look to have been rolled into "Personalization," still have their own separate entry.

[an article [informationweek.com] from this story [slashdot.org]]

Re:Using Vista for a bit

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.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

How many "legacy apps" (IE anything not written specifically for Vista) have you tried to use? The problem won't be with Vista itself, but how Vista reacts with older programs, programs you love, perhaps even programs you can't live without. I have Vista RC2 installed but I have not booted into it in a while for just that reason. It's also probably a big reason why Linux isn't catching on...

Re:Using Vista for a bit

Can you give some examples of programs you love and/or can't do without that worked with XP but won't work under Vista? I'm both honestly curious and "calling you out" because a post such as yours should have included such examples in the first place.

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

Nero. In fact, no software I tried for DVD burning (e.g. DVD Shrink, AnyDVD) worked under Vista. I tried the Enterprise edition, FWIW.
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

It's funny how CD/DVD burning software is the one that doesn't work. I remember when I upgraded to Windows 2000 (it might have been xp), and none of the CD Burning programs I had worked anymore. Do they have to change the way CD burning works with every new version? Is there a reasonable explanation why CD burning programs always end up broken?

Re:Using Vista for a bit

It's funny how CD/DVD burning software is the one that doesn't work

Actually, what's funny is that CD/DVD burning software is the first thing I thought of when GP mentioned things that didn't work. I would't be surprised if high-end video cards that support HD video had issues, too.

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

Is there a reasonable explanation why CD burning programs always end up broken?

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....

Pfft GUIs - you can keep 'em

cp file.iso /mnt/cd/wd # burn to cd
rm /mnt/cd/wd # fixate
echo eject > /mnt/cd/ctl # eject

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/4/cdfs [bell-labs.com]

Of course it's an upgrade

It's the ME version of XP.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

Just because your parents or grandparents can't learn a new OS doesn't mean the whole world should suffer their incompetence.

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

TortoiseSVN.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

Didn't try Vista, but I know one thing: people have short memories. I remember when XP came out, after trying it a bit, I had sworn to stick with Windows 2000 for like ever. And have until WinXP SP1, near the release of SP2. Microsoft has an history of releasing beta products. Always has been that way: Windows NT 4 wasn't stable enough to be seriously used until SP5, and was blue screening like it was Windows ME until SP6 (if I remember well), at which point it was decent for working on.

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.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

Mummy, I've done a poo poo in the potty, I'm a good boy.

Re:Using Vista for a bit

> 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:

"Windows Media Player cannot play this DVD because there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder and video card. Try installing an updated driver for your video card."

Want to cross our DRM? Pay our toll!

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!

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.

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 /. anti-DRM mindset, I don't think it would make much difference in the end.

it's a euphemism.

Microsoft has granted, in a roundabout way, that Vista has 'high impact issues.

I'm sure they're using the phrase "High impact" in much the same way as the NTSB.

Win XP wins out over VISTA...

for a long time, unless you just like to pay to be a beta tester.

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

Win XP wins out over VISTA for a long time, unless you just like to pay to be a beta tester.

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?

"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"

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?

One bloggers view(s) qualify as news when they have pertinant new information about a something happening in the world, a new outlook, a detailed analysis, or just a good overall post (article). Same as any other person who creates content that is exposed to a large mass.

"Inbuilt undelete"

8. Inbuilt undelete
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"

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

Apple agrees [wikipedia.org], it can be a neat thing.

NTFS's alternate streams

These are Trouble with a capital "T".

(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 /etc/fstab or via the tune2fs program.

I can keep going...

Normal APIs don't support extra streams. Getting fopen() to work with streams is a hack, to put it mildly.

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?

Seriously?

I don't have Vista. Can anyone with Vista verify what this guy says about the file dialog? I'm just a bit shocked and even with my general lack of respect for Microsoft hesitant to believe they'd release something that broken.

Re:Seriously?

Nope, the blogger is just an idiot. Or possibly just ignorant, but I feel like being insulting.

1. The new file browsing interface is broken
   1. Notice that when I clicked on the dropdown it shows me a bunch of websites. A BUNCH OF FRICKEN WEBSITES! No, not the usual tree of folders, and My computer so I can locate a file.
      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.
   2. One other bone I have to pick with the new browsing interface is the difficulty in going back to the parent of the current directory. The new way makes going back up a few folders a much longer process. Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent.
      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.
2. The new start menu sucks (Kind of)
   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.
3. Windows Networking is a mess
   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.
4. Windows Search Is Broken - Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.
   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.)
5. Windows copying has not improved
   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.

Re:Seriously?

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.

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?

Windows Search Is Broken - Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.
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.)

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?

Ok, announcing SP1 for the second half of 07 is reasonable since all software has bugs. Calling for testers for the first service pack before the turd actually drops from their butts[1] is another thing entirely. If they have known 'high impact issues' they should delay initial release one more time. This is supposed to be a stable commercial product. Fedora would (hell, HAS) hold a release if it had 'high impact issues' and they pitch themselves as more of an early adopter testbed. Vista is going to be forcefed on millions of unsuspecting computer buyers whether they want it or not. Is it really unreasonable to expect the KNOWN bugs to be squished before forcing OEMs to preload it?

[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.

That's just cruel.

Why not to get Vista?

1: It's more of the same. How many times do you have to buy more of the same before you realise it isn't solving your problems?
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 diversity is.
7: Retraining costs. See #2.
8: Bad for the environment. Requires another round of system purchases and junking of "old" systems.

Bill Gates: Profit!

I'm sure there are more.

Re:Why not to get Vista?

1: It's more of the same. How many times do you have to buy more of the same before you realise it isn't solving your problems?
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 diversity is.
7: Retraining costs. See #2.
8: Bad for the environment. Requires another round of system purchases and junking of "old" systems.

Bill Gates: Profit!

I'm sure there are more.

_______

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_Windo ws_Vista [wikipedia.org] .
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.

___

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?

1. New to Microsoft features, yes. Most of the huge, touted, wonderful features of Vista are the same sort that most users turn off right away. You have to love the ridiculous theme trash, the crap default sidebar, the poorly implemented 3d junk, etc. I love how I have to play games to get rid of that stuff... it really makes me love dealing with a new install of XP, and I just adore the time it takes to turn it all off in Vista. Keep it.

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

My current video card is already DX10-ready and I intend to use it in its fullest potential.

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

Before you mod me troll, RTFA #5. Then mod me troll.

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.

Re:not a llort

Who the fuck modded you +informative?

This is a joke based on an old anti-Mac OS troll that used to get posted here on /. a whole lot back in the day.

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:

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) 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 Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

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.

Re:not a llort

Who the fuck modded you +informative?

This is a joke based on an old anti-Paper troll that used to get posted here on /. a whole lot back in the day by Galileo Galilee (account number 37).

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:

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you paper fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a piece of paper for about 20 minutes now while I attempt to copy a 17 point annotated image of an ornithopter from one page on the easel to another. 20 minutes. At home, on my papyrus on a simple slanted desk, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this paper, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.

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.

Article /.ted

Reckon you won't upgrade to Vista until the first service pack is released? That's looking likely to be the second half of this year, according to Microsoft's latest email blast.

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' but some OS components which missed the RTM cut-off will almost certainly be rolled into the update.

One of the candidates for this better-late-than-never brigade would be the Windows PowerShell, previously Microsoft Shell -- a .NET-based command line shell with its own scripting language.

However, the Redmond clarion call declares that "regressions from Windows Vista and Windows XP, security, deployment blockers and other high impact issues as are the primary focus for the Service Pack."

So, yes, the still not-yet-released Vista has "high impact issues".

Testers will be enrolled in the Vista SP1 "Technology Adoption Program" and "must be willing to provide feedback and deploy pre-release builds into production environments."

In exchange, Microsoft promises they will have "an opportunity to influence product changes including the opportunity to work directly with product groups influencing their short term and long term goals".

Channels of communications back to the mother ship will include weekly LiveMeeting sessions, "onsite events and regular conference calls" with "24/7 production support for the Service Pack throughout the program."

There's also a clear desire to ensure that SP1 is rock sold. One of the goals for TAP testers will be to "validate the stability of Windows Vista SP1 through production deployments" says the email.

"It's important that customers deploy the Service Pack into production environments within 30 days of a milestone release. Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities. The Windows TAP team will work with customers to identify and drive these issues."

If Vista SP1 scrapes in by December 2007 it will have been 11 months since the OS itself debuted -- the same length of time it took for Windows XP to get its first service pack. However, Microsoft is almost certainly aiming for a much earlier arrival, perhaps to overcome the reluctance among consumers and businesses alike to plunge headfirst into Vista. This is most often espoused in the conventional Windows wisdom which suggests waiting until Service Pack 1 ships.

So how do you get invited to sit at the cool kids' table with all the other TAP folk? This isn't a program for mere mortals. Microsoft suggests that interested users contact their" Technical Account Manager at Microsoft to get nominated".

The Chosen Ones will be expected to "deploy pre-release versions of Service Pack 1 into production environments at each major milestone (Beta, RC, RTM) within 30 days of the milestone release, actively provide feedback on all builds made available to them" and also "meet or exceed predetermined deployment count goals for each milestone."

Not so much Vista, but 3rd party apps.

-Vmware still has yet to release a new VMWorkstation (6.0 is in beta) designed to run Vista as the host O/S
-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....)

Volunteer for what?

> Microsoft has ... has put out an email call for technical users to participate in testing Service Pack 1,

No thanks Bill. I'll wait for my degraded video and audio like everyone else.

Check out the below - im horrified

Even the below is single-handedly enough for deterring me away from vista :

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.

I don't what to say - aaaaaiiiiiiiii?

I do not care what they think might be fixed 6 months after they release it. Straight up I will not deploy it until it's more than 3 STD's complete. That means 99.4%. MS has some colossal balls to make something this shoddy and incomplete. I swear they WILL abandon the data center at this rate, by the end of 2008. In fact they should freeze the damn thing right now finish the code for 'significant impact issues' and delay the release another 6 months. What's the difference in another delay at this point?

He didn't look very hard...

From TFA:

Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent.

Uh? In Vista you can use Alt-Up (yeah, same as OSX) to go to the parent of an open folder. He must be thinking of XP with its retarded Back/Forward only navigation.

Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it.

Hmm, no. Perhaps he missed the "Advanced Search" drop down? The MS UI monkey hid it well, but it's there in his screenshot... (It still ignores unknown formats though, like XP SP2 does)

Still, he makes some good points. There are many UI "regressions" in Vista, and for some things productivity drops down. For example it takes ages to delete a bunch of files now, apparently because of the new progress bar... ("computing time remaining" shouldn't take 10 seconds for three files!)

I sincerely hope SP1 addresses these issues, because they are a nuisance...

what, no QA dept

mabe this is a stupid question, but why microsoft is already working on SP1 for vista? I mean, don't they have a QA department, don't they have people to test the thing? Shouldn't an OS be somewhat working and already have dealt with security issues before they launch it on the public. what makes this so onerous is that you can't get computers with XP, or if you can now, you won't be able to in the near future. they might criticize OSS, but at least a .9 release is a .9. what the hell, I run OS X.

ME 2.0

Having serious ME flashbacks. I think it's time to put all my Win 2000 disks in a bank vault.

What about XP SP3

Microsoft swore up and down that they would have a new service pack for Windows XP after Vista.

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.

Any publicity is good publicity

Users, well businesses anyway don't seem to care one bit whether MS WIndows, any version, works or not. That's my observation. Use it and shut up...

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.

Vista Service Pack 1 is coming

The APC article tells us:

Vista Service Pack 1 is coming

The byline to the title should be:

Consumers, open your mouths!

Minorly OT: iTMS doesn't work!

My brother has Vista on his ThinkPad. Imagine how disappointed we were when iTMS couldn't properly play his purchased music. It turns out you need to run iTMS in an XP compatibility mode, and it takes a little digging to find that out.

Nice.

number 1 reason people should stick to XP

What people should do if they ever want windows is INSIST on XP instead of Vista!
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_c ost.txt [auckland.ac.nz]

What gives him the right to..

"kindly forgive Windows ME"?!?!?! I'm still waiting for some hungry lawyer to launch that class action lawsuit. What a mess/tragedy/travesty ME was. The only upside was it gave me the righteous outrage I needed to allow me to start using unauthorized copies of (more useful) Windows discs.

Just delay the fu**er again

Vista is so delayed, would it hurt to delay it a little more, to fix those high impact issues?? I mean, wouldn't it be great to get a Microsoft OS that works from release, and not having to wait to SPxxx for it to work right? Its been delayed a million and one times already.. whats the friggin difference anymore...

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?

Top 10 reasons to upgrade?

I couldn't get over how bad the "Top 10 reasons to upgrade" were. Is that really the best that Vista can offer me? I posted this as a comment to the article:

First off, reasons 2 and 3 are not reasons at all. The general populous already has XP installed; the fact that the upgrade is (supposedly) easy is no reason to actually do it.

Reasons 1, 4, 6, 7, and 8 have been in other, better operating systems, some for many years. These aren't reasons to upgrade, they're reasons to switch.

And reasons 9 and 10 are not only incredibly bad reasons to upgrade, but they're downright insulting. I'm actually offended that you consider the fact that they don't even offer you a choice as a reason to stick with Microsoft.

As for reason 5, I feel compelled to point out that Windows' ACPI support is only due to Microsoft's influence in developing a deliberately convoluted standard to hinder competing operating systems, a monopolistic business practice that borders on antitrust; however that's irrelevant to users. What is relevant, however, is the fact that I know dozens of Windows users, and Sleep works fine for all of them. Sleep works fine for me too, on both XP and Linux. There's nothing here that Vista could offer me.

Deja-vu

Is anyone else having deja-vus left right and center? It feels like last week we were arguing why people should stick with 2k and not adopt XP. How XP was just eye candy over 2k and how it didn't improve anything of importance and it happened before 2k, etc etc. Once again, here we are, arguing that the new version of Windows is nothing more than an empty upgrade forced upon the masses to continue increasing MS's bank. What has changed since the last iteration of brown matter MS flicked at us? Is this really the best Windows version ever? Will people finally wake up and smell the poop MS packages? Will the masses give Linux/OSX a "serious" try? Will we be here x number years from now arguing about how people should stick with Vista instead of upgrading to MS's new Windows 2k10?

I'm using Vista and I LOVE it!

Right now it's running perfectly fine, with no BSOD, no DRM issues, awesome graphics, and a wonderfully intuitive OS/desktop combination (that can't be matched by any other OS on the face of this earth) on my brand new Acer Ferrari 1000 laptop computer, that I got from my good friend Steve Ba.... wait, uh... Palmer.

Did I mention it's also runs blogging software without any problems?

Stop the plague! Give consumers a real choice.

Vista doesn't have issues. It *IS* an issue to anyone who cares about secure, reliable, affordable computing. I've been telling clients to avoid it like the plague that it is. The main problem with the plague known as MS Vista is that it is spread by the carriers known as computer manufacturers.

One way the plague might be stopped is for the US and EU to re-open their anti-trust cases against Micro$oft with a minimum goal of having any system where an MS OS comes pre-infec^H^H^Hstalled boot up the first time to a screen that gives the customer a choice of alternative non-MS (FOSS) operating systems. Since none of the major vendors, Dell, HP/Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo, etc. provide much in the way of technical support unless a customer pays them outrageous prices, they really wouldn't have anything to lose by pre-installing one or more flavors of Linux or Unix on the new boxes they distribute via the major chain stores.

My point is that the typical PC buyer has little choice but to pay for and try to figure out how to deal with the Microsoft crapware that comes on almost all new systems. I suspect that many computer vendors would welcome an opportunity to stop wasting money on lame MS products and distribute FOSS equivalents. The neat thing is that MS has already implemented a system whereby it can charge only those customers who actually decide to use its buggy bloatware instead of one or more of the other OSes and office suites that manufacturers decide to allow the consumer to select from when she first boots a new computer.

I truly wish new systems came bare by default, with consumers getting to choose which operating system(s) and office suite(s) they want to put on them. I fondly recall when systems came with complete sets of installation disks (not discs :-) That would be another great requirement of any settlement the US and EU might reach with M$: if a new system is shipped with an M$ OS as the default, it ought to include a full set of generic Windows install discs, with a license transferable to any other machine the consumer decides to put it on. Making that part of the agreement retroactive, so that current users of Win98, WinME, WinNT, and WinXP could easily obtain installation discs for their old OSes when they decide to upgrade their hardware would annoy MS but impose no significant burden upon it, as long as it could charge a nominal fee to people who want physical install discs instead of DLing ISO images and burning and burning their own. I think a fair price for a set of Winblows install discs could be pegged at what it costs to have a set of install discs for a quality OS such as Ubuntu delivred to one's door. :-)

Basically, in order to end the Microsoft monopoly and stop the spread of Microsoft Buggy Bloatware(tm), the anti-trust regulators need to force the supply chain to change so that costly MS operating system and office suite software is no longer the default. As much as I dislike MS these days, I have little doubt it could deliver a very high-quality OS (far superior to the flashy junkware known as Vista) if it had to compete on an even playing field. This would be especially true if big companies such as Google or Sun could put their own (new) OSes on new systems as options, right alongside the MS product, since all existing contracts MS has with hardware vendors that pre-install its OSes would be nullified as part of any reasonable anti-trust settlement.

Vista is for dumb fat-asses.

With oppressive DRM and licensing restrictions being shoved down your throat, I see no reason anyone other than a dumb fat fuck who shits gold and has pond scum for brains would "upgrade" to vista. Vote with your wallet. Don't buy vista.

Reasons to upgrade?

I am amused by the three of the 10 reasons to upgrade:

2. Image-based install
3. Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation
10. Face it, you have no choice

His 10th reasons ends with "Face it: your arse belongs to Redmond." Not really what you would get from a marketing department, is it?

Is that the best a MS fan-boy can do for his new fav toy? That is not a good sign for the company. I don't want to spend time on installation more than anyone else, but I would at least like to pretend it is a one-time cost (even though I have just had to re-install on the home computer) and it is certainly not 20 % of my calculations when thinking about upgrades.

The last reason, well, that is just a complete turn-off for me.

Have you used Office 2007 yet?

I am a longtime computer user and i UNINSTALLED it after using it for a total of 3 days.
 
I sent a couple of files for assignments I had to teachers, and guess what! You can't even get a viewer for excel 2007 so they can open and read what I've done! WTF. And to top it off, the interface is so crazy I couldn't find the undo button without doing a google search 2 or 3 times. Yeah, go ribbons... If Vista is anything like that, they are going to go down like the Hindenberg...

Vista is a clusterfuck - from _my_ blog

I applied for a contract job a day or two ago, desktop rollout engineer, ello, all things being given this likely means MS Windows Vista rollout engineer, and / or MS Office 2007 rollout engineer.

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

High Impact "issue" ?

Does this mean it doesn't crash as gracefully as XP ?

For a new O/S it's natural to have problems...

In a few years we will remember these discussions and smile...no new O/S comes out without problems...especially one that is rewritten from scratch and has fundamental changes like Vista.

Usability?

Familiarity is one of the key concepts of usability. Something that is familiar, no matter how backwards, promises to be more usable. Vista, for the most part, builds off its predecessors. It's like having a cluttered office - and then one day someone comes in and cleans it without you knowing. It may not have been "usable" (by an objective third party perspective) before, but it's certainly not usable (by your own perspective) now. That said, I really like some of the design concepts in Vista, although they certainly have taken getting used to. For example, breaking the file path in Windows File Explorer into breadcrumbs each with a drop-down menu makes traversing the file system much faster for your average user - at least once they get used to it.

In other news, one blogger believes

Well that's a new low. If we're making stories out of what one blogger believes then we also need to announce that Linux is dead, AmigaOS is both dead and alive and that capri pants are back in fashion.

And no-one wants that.

My Experince of Vista

1. Noticeably slower out of the box than 2k3/XP (for obvious reasons like Aero, but also for non-obvious reasons like the HDD indexer running incessantly)

2. Retarded Explorer UI - each explorer window has about 50% of it's real-estate wasted through useless "information bars" etc. And you can't remove most of it.

3. Awful sound - on a laptop I purchased only 2 months ago the sound is awful replete with popping sounds and unexpected sound sub-system deaths (i.e. the sound frequently just stops working, requiring a reboot).

4. DRM

5. Poor as ever security (because no matter what anyone says, Vista has not been built from the ground up - it is NT version 6).

6. God-awful sleep/hibernate support - this is an area that is meant to have been improved, but it worked flawlessly on XP and 2k3, on my 2 HP laptops I frequently have to hard re-boot because they will not wake-up.

On the flip side, there are positives such as improved out of the box hardware support and the inclusion of a chess game ;), but Vista has serious issues that should have been fixed in the 5 years MS had to fix them.

No one button!

FTA:
"Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent."

No one button? What about the other numbers?

When will people learn...

The final beta of most OSs are tagged with "RC2", the final beta of a MS system is tagged "SP2".

Learn the difference and heed it!

I'm buying Vista. Here's why...

I'm buying Vista, and there is only one reason why:

1. My software company requires that I support it.

I need it to test the software will run on it. Other than that, I have zero use for it. I imagine people are in the same boat as me.

Free Hand outs

They want us to test their half bakes crap again...??!! Pass...
If they want me to benchtest any more of their half baked code they can send
me a cheque to the tune of $135/hr. That's what my clients pay.
And *They* aren't large multi nationals that could afford a league of Alpha/Beta testers.
Mind you, anytine you use a M$ Product and send in a detailed complaint, they save R&D money anyways....

What would you want them to fix in a service pack?

And what do you think they've been doing since wrapping up the code for final vista bits last year? They had what... 10,000 engineers on Vista. You think a few of them found a bug or two worth fixing? Every fix released on Windows Update ends up in a service pack. Yes, there are fixes. Yes, there are still fixes coming out for XP and it's been 6 years since that release.

Should the headline be: "Haha MS is planning to release a service pack"?
How is this news?

Windows 3.1 was hardly a regression, either.

I rememeber Windows 3.1 being an improvement over Windows 3.0, and Windows 3.0 was certainly an improvement over the copy of Windows/286 2.1 I used previously.

Bad wording on the blogger's part, I think...

Hasta La Vista Baby

Who needs Vista?

Same crap in a new box.

More sludge from MS to keep you broke and miserable.

Just say "No Thanks, Vista's not for me."

(For all you Troll-spotters out there-- I just thought I'd say preemptively that this is NOT a troll, this is my OPINION-- there is a difference. So go take your troll-hating self someplace else and leave my post alone)

One Blogger's FUD

I found the blogger's 5 Sins of Vista [intelliadmin.com] mostly FUD.

One other bone I have to pick with the new browsing interface is the difficulty in going back to the parent of the current directory. The new way makes going back up a few folders a much longer process. Simply stated there is no one button that will always bring you back up to the parent.

It is very easy to go back to the parent. Simply click on the parent folder in the breadcrumb. Or, you can use alt+up arrow on the keyboard. Or, if the parent was the last directory you were in you can alt+back arrow on the keyboard. There are probably others.

When I first started using the new start menu I loved it. I usually have 100s of programs installed, and the new interface makes it much easier to navigate. But there is something also I do with the run command on the start menu.

If I want a specific folder to launch in explorer I just type it out. Click start, then run and type c: Press enter, and the folder will show up.

Not anymore. If you forget the trailing backslash it will launch a program that is the closest match to that word. So for me, when I type c: It launches Remote Desktop! Argg! I must still make this mistake about 10 times a day. It would be so easy for them to check and see if the folder exists before launching an application

Dumb ass. Either a) Put a freaking trailing backslash on the c: from the search textbox or b) Go to the start button properties menu and reenable the run command on the start menu and it will act just like it did in XP.

need to go into networking options often when going from place to place with my laptop. Since some places need a static IP, others need dynamic, etc. When I go into windows networking I am greeted with this.

Look at all of the options I am given here. If you have never used Vista before - Quick tell me how to change the IP address on my wireless card!

How 'bout clicking on "manage network connections" and it's the same as it was in XP. Was that quick enough?

Now when I want a simple search for any file that contains the string 'IntelliAdmin' I can't do it. Instead of fixing what they broke in XP SP2, they just took it out! I want a simple search program that will search for a file on my hard drive (Hint to Microsoft - Every file, not just the types you know about like Word and Excel files) that contains a specific string of letters. It can't be done any more with windows search.

Two options. If a search returns no results, you will see an option to "search within files". Or, alternately, if you want to always use this option, go to (gasp!) options and choose "always search file names and contents". Dumb ass.

I absolutely hate it when my 5000 file copy gets killed half way through because 1 single file can't be opened.

Which is why in Vista all file copy problems are moved to the end of the queue and will not display any dialog until all the copyable files have been copied.

Hooray for the FUD which, despite being nearly 100% wrong still gets 3211 diggs. Now, everyone say "baaaaaaah!" and follow the sheep in front of you.

Sounds shakier than Rick Waller on a unicycle...

From the article:
"Issues will surface from the deployments as well as throughout the program as end users test its limits thought their day-to-day activities."

Disregarding the confusion between thought and through, it's slightly worrying that the limits of Windows Vista SP1 are expected to be reached during the performance of 'day-to-day activities'.....

Let em drown in their bugridden malware rubbish

No matter what you say the m$ schills will howl you down.
I don't argue with people over their choice of OS any more, I just let them stew in their own juice.

Case in point :

My local parish priest mentioned to me that he was sick to death of getting someone to reinstall his Windows OS due to registry corruption, malware et al . He knew I was a Mac user & since I had never pushed it down his throat he asked me for advice. I gave him a summary of pros & cons of Win/Mac/Lin asked what apps he absolutely had to have etc. A friend loaned him a powerbook for a week with the understanding that he ask for uidance if stuck.

Next Sunday after Mass he grabs me & proudly explains how he just bought a new Wintel Acer latop.
My first thought was "But what about...." then I just bit my toungue.

Let em drown in their bugridden malware rubbish i say.

Sweet monkey crap

I know I'm late on this one, but the pro-Vista article is basically "now Windows does OS X" and doesn't crap out quite so much anymore. And I love the last argument- "you have no choice". At this point, yeah, I do. The work arounds may be clumsy and take more time, but I don't HAVE to shovel monkey poo down as food.

Re:I read the 'reasons' to get vista, and got stup

I think you're trolling, so I wouldn't have replied except you already have at least one +1 moderation.

JUST WHAT the hell does that mean ?!?!?!

"I like buzzwords"? I dunno.

god, WHAT is this ? im gonna make a critique, but i am speechless. WHAT is image based install ? and why is it good for us ? Were the installations of xp domino-based ? god, i cant establish relevancy - WHAT is that ?

Did you RTFP (paragraph) or just the heading? I can't see exactly what it says, but I *do* remember that it says that it should be faster, and I just skimmed.

what is a search folder ?

I bet the paragraph under it went into more details. But in liu of that, a Google for "Vista search folder" leads to this description [microsoft.com]:

A Search Folder is simply a search that you save. Opening a Search Folder instantly runs that saved search, displaying up-to-date results immediately.

s/he who was afraid of deleting something by mistake was already using the recycling bin. SO ?

Again, RTFP. It's not just undelete, it sounds like a versioning filesystem. Thing CVS+NTFS. As I posted above, I have longed for a filesystem for this feature for some time, if it does what it sounds like.

Image-based install

Image-based install is where you install by copying a filesystem of already-installed code.

I built a linux install CD a few years ago, and most tasks were automated, it had to:

1. Partition the disk
2. Make some filesystems
3. Untar the .tar.gz images from the CD onto the filesystems
4. Configure LILO
5. Reboot

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 called the "pristine copy" was a virtual machine under User-Mode Linux. Whenever I wanted to update my install CD I'd just boot it up, do "apt-get upgrade" and use the tools to build a new install CD.

Machines installed from the install CD were naturally upgraded using normal "apt-get upgrade". Image-based install only works for the initial installation.

Re:10 reasons why

??? Doesn't every OS have a find command or keep a database of current files? How is this different from XP?

Dunno what's different with the desktop search, but the search folders are a neat idea; basically they are saved searches I guess displayed like a folder. You go into one, you see what the results would be if you did the search again right then.

It's somewhat similar to the Opera email client's views or whatever they call them (it's been a while since I used it). I would set up a view that would show all emails with a particular subject, but rather than have a filter that moved them there, they would just show up.

I doubt it's unique to Vista, but it's still a neat idea.

All undelete means is that instead of doing remove you do move. Nothing exciting about that.

The rest of the paragraph on this one is less misleading than the title... it's not so much undelete as versioning. Think NTFS+CVS. And, IMO, this is exciting; I've been wanting a file system that did that for a long time. No clue if Vista does quite what I want, but we'll see sometime.

Re:I read the 'reasons' to get vista, and got stup

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?

tell me one encryption system that wont take toll on system resources and tell me one techie that wont go nuts trying to tell an average joe why his/her computer slowing down like hell with encryption and why s/he cant "make it faster". is this something that can justify hundreds of dollars of new purchases both in terms of hardware and vista cost to boot ? free > easy in most situations, especially in mid $xxx range and over.

this is just your lack of understanding, it is not just undelete of somethign you press delete on, it is undelete on stuff you overwrote, try recovering that document you overwrote from your recycling bin.

you are meaning that something that is marked as deleted in filesystem and the space it occupied was overwritten by some other file, hence previously unrecoverable. then it is so that it will use a svn like system for it. actually this might be curse than a blessing, since even the registry file structure most often gets corrupted in even xp and causes many hard to detect errors ranging from driver issues resulting from the records to even more serious stuff. more stuff to be broken here that means ?

directX10 has a lot of changes that make utilising new graphics cards more efficient and allow for much better utilisation of CPU and graphics memory and GPU, if you really were a gamer as you stated this would be something you would be looking forward too as it increases a programmers abilities to deliver better games to you. but hey your a troll so no point in explaining that.

im sorry, but for these arguments here about dx10 and gaming, i will outright and flat out say you are totally wrong.

there are acceptable levels of gaming - NO gamer wants to unload around $3000 on hardware so that their vistaed new box will function as fast and acceptable as their previous xp box. any hardcore gamer knows that from some point on there are limits to what human perception can discern in terms of visuals, sound and any other input from the interface. it does not matter in a heated 20vs20 battle the orc you are facing has 1 degrees more smoothed out corners or not, even. and the current state of gaming art delivers more than what is needed.

and you should know that the phrase "better games" does not mean nothing to a hardcore gamer. it is undefinable and too obscure.

you are calling me a troll, but you are speaking like a microsoft salesman citing vague arguments ?

Re:I read the 'reasons' to get vista, and got stup

"Desktop search and search folders built in" what is a search folder ?

It is a virtual directory defined not by the physical path but by a search query. I've been using vista now for about two months and the integrated search is basically why I would not want to go back to XP. While the indexing pretty much sucks and is slow to search, it is amazingly useful for file system navigation. Remember WinFS? This is almost as good - you have logical operators and an object oriented approach. It is not quite as powerful as a full relational database, but close.

Re:Vista: perfect

Can someone remind me of the top few reasons not to switch to linux and other free software?

You're likely to be locked into proprietary technology and their formats.

Re:I read the 'reasons' to get vista, and got stup

I just read your entire post and came to the conclusion that you are retarted.

These lists are generating a lot of discussion.

A number of other bloggers have written rebuttals to the list of 10 reasons to use Windows. Some of them are actually pretty scathing.

http://www.tipsdr.com/?p=725 [tipsdr.com]
http://pinderkent.blogsavy.com/archives/30 [blogsavy.com]
http://scott2096.blogspot.com/2007/01/10-reasons-n ot-to-get-vista.html [blogspot.com]
http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2007/01/it_won t_conjure.html [siliconvalley.com]

These lists were also discussed a lot over at OSNews recently: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17024 [osnews.com]

Re:I read the 'reasons' to get vista, and got stup

"ui built for the era of video and photography"

JUST WHAT the hell does that mean ?!?!?!

It means that the reviewer has finally spotted a number of features that have been available since XP was released, and is getting thrilled about them because he thinks they're new. I.e. image thumbnail view, photo album folder format, file metadata columns in explorer, etc.

Re:If I were nVidia, my response if driver revoked

"Team, find me a way to remove the driver signing check from Vista. I don't care if we have to patch the kernel image and bootloader to do so."

Problem with this is that if you have a TPM enabled machine, patching your bootloader or kernel could invalidate your DRM media.