Is Vista a Trap?

logube writes "BBC has up an article about the trap of installing Vista in your existing desktop. Written by Tim Weber, a self-confessed 'sucker for technology,' this article is a good introduction to the pain and extra money required to get going with the newest version of Windows. See how you can spend an extra 130 british pounds, and still have no working webcam! Says Weber, 'It took me one day to get online. The detail is tedious and highly technical: reinstalling drivers and router firmware didn't work, but after many trial and error tweaks to Vista's TCP/IP settings, I had internet access. Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.'"

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Directx 10. They could have put out an XP version. (of course that doesnt sell CDs) You will need DX10 for upcoming games. Security updates (there still must be holes). Besides that I say wait as long as you can.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

I was reading an article recently where people were looking for ways to explain what the problems are with digital rights management technology to non technically minded people.

Examples given tended to be along the lines of "I can't watch foreign released films, they were never released locally so I have no legal option, and I need this for my book report." and "You shouldn't have to pay for that song again, you already paid for it."

These are, quite frankly, not the most pressing examples I could think of.

Here's some examples you can show your mom and dad:

1) Broadcast news will be all be digitally signed by the big media companies.

The same technology used to cause your saved version of American Idol to self-destruct can be used after the fact to erase news right off your home electronics. It will also prevent it from being transferred to unprotected permanent media, or played back from any backup.

2) Medical software and data will all be digitally signed by the rights owners.

The same technology used to stop software piracy could be used after the fact to switch off hospitals and clinics that don't pay their bills. There is massive financial incentive to design this to happen automatically. Anyone who doubts the realism of this scenario need only look as far as the behavior of the existing drug companies.

3) Company files will all be digitally signed.

If you are being screwed over by your employer or any company you have business dealings with, they will be able to ensure that you don't make anyone else aware of it.

Anyone who thinks this technology is about protecting Britney Spears from Bluebeard the Pirate is missing the point. This is about totalitarianism.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Because in Soviet America, America hates you.

(sorry - couldn't resist)

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

http://www.dwheeler.com/blog/2007/01/07/#drm-nonse nse-hddvd [dwheeler.com]

Nuff Said.

David Wheeler has got it all in a screenful. Why it doesn't do the content-providers any good, why it doesn't do the "consumer" any good, and why it's all a waste of time anyway.

All written in clear English.

One quote from the article: "I do not approve of piracy. I don't approve of murder, either, yet I approve of the sale of steak knives and cleaning supplies... and would oppose trying to halt their sales."

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

I'm no longer running it because it wasn't very stable (read: Vista and things like Media Center were not stable from a clean install, not the third party software drivers were unstable), but it's pretty good for games, at least it seems like it will be when driver support is there.

For example, I installed the Beta Nvidia drivers, which while giving me over all worse performance because of a lack of SLI support, did actually give a demonstrable and perceptible performance boost (as promised), even though the drivers were not file.

DirectX 10 is the thing that's likely to get me to upgrade again to it, hopefully by the time it's 'mainstream' a service pack or two will be out.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

... I wouldn't even bother to boot back into XP for gaming

Funny, that's the same thing I have to do from Linux.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

FPSs, MMORPGs and RTSs all suck on consoles. Considering that I'm only interested in those genres and that online play with a fast control scheme (ie. keyboard and mouse) is a requirement for me to even consider playing, I think I'll stick with my PC.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Fuck that! Why would I want to replace my nice, general-purpose, hackable PC with DRM-infested proprietary crap?

(Note: I'm not going to be playing games on Vista, either.)

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Not supporting DX9 makes no business sense. DX10-only games will be games by Microsoft, or games for which Microsoft paid the developer their expected DX9 profits to be DX10-only.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Or even ditching DX completely and using OpenGL.

Game companies arent stupid. They know people are trying other OS's.
Google, id software, Epic and others have moved accordingly.
I'm betting that other companies are considering it.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Nothing that you probably need. Its slightly better than XP. Not 5-years-of-development better, but slightly. For all the flack, FUD, and outright lies that Slashdotters fling about UAC, it actually is a good idea, and a step in the right direction for Windows.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

Yes unfortunately I tend to forget how different /. is when it comes to vague posts or ranting.
I have used Vista, I do not like it, it's intrusive and annoying to me (yes I do want to run that exe), I personally don't care about eye candy, I am into performance which vista does not have unless you are running a state of the art proc, 4 gig's of RAM and a high end graphics card (which none have decent drivers as of yet)
I'm not going to get into the DRM portion of Vista.
You're a sucker to buy it and a fool to run it.

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

I go days without seeing a UAC box, but its nice to know my account has user level priveledges instead of admin.

So, it sounds like when they are done reimplementing UNIX, they might just have a fine operating system.

Conditioned Response

I'm not sure what lies you've been reading about UAC, but it conditions users to always say "Yes" to security prompts. This is a very terrible idea and in this situation the criticism is well deserved.
"You are about to open the Control Panel -- allow or deny?"
"You are about to open the Program Files folder -- allow or deny?"
"You are about to modify user preferences -- allow or deny?
"You are about to open attachment pzxyTrojan.exe -- allow or deny?"
Allow.. allow.. allow.. allow.. allow..

Worse than XP (for now)

Remember, Microsoft said exactly the same thing about XP and 2000 that they do about Vista, and that they have about every single version of Windows except pehaps 1.0: "Faster, more secure, more personalized, better than ever before!"

And we say exactly the same thing we've always said: "Bloated, incompatible, too invasive, look at that WGA!" XP has the same privacy issues, 2000 had worse (if possible) compatibility issues.

But around SP1 or SP2, XP became livable, arguably better than 2000. And probably around SP1, 2000 became stable enough, and was obviously a HUGE upgrade compared to 98 -- so huge that if they hadn't done it when they did, Linux probably would've taken over.

So, we're going to have the same thing happen here. I predict that in roughly 2 years, around SP1 or SP2, Vista will actually be better than XP. But it isn't yet -- too much stuff isn't compatible, and the "beta" was a laugh; if you buy it now, you are their gamma testers.

Smart people stick with XP, and let the rest of the world test and debug Vista for us.

Me? I'll keep dual-booting XP and Linux (Ubuntu here, Gentoo at home).

Re:Does Vista have anything we need?

A list of new features: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windo ws_Vista [wikipedia.org]

this was expected

as this happened with xp-64, didn't it?

also, by that logic, linux is a trap

Re:this was expected

also, by that logic, linux is a trap

At least you get the satisfaction of spending a whole day (or more) putting the elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque trap together yourself first.

=Smidge=

Frawless Victoly!

Focus your fire on that unsupported hardware!

Re:No.

Microsoft isn't completely blameless here. If Microsoft had adopted the same strategy for drivers as the OpenBSD project has (accepting either fully open drivers or no drivers), then somebody (even Microsoft) could make the drivers work on Vista.

This is yet another why open drivers built from publicly-available hardware documentation are better than binary-blob drivers.

Re:No.

How would they enforce it? If a company just puts out a binary driver, what's to stop the user from installing it? Can YOU think of a way?

Sorry, but there is just NO way Microsoft could ever enforce that policy. Stop blaming Microsoft for corporations wanting to keep their drivers secret so that their competitors don't use them to improve their OWN drivers.

Re:No.

Microsoft isn't completely blameless here. If Microsoft had adopted the same strategy for drivers as the OpenBSD project has (accepting either fully open drivers or no drivers), then somebody (even Microsoft) could make the drivers work on Vista. This is yet another why open drivers built from publicly-available hardware documentation are better than binary-blob drivers.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Microsoft isn't going to force vendors to open source their drivers when they so closely guard their own code. What's good for the gander is good for the goose and all that.

You're point is well taken however. I don't see why hardware vendors don't release their source code. They can patent the hardware if it truly contains innovations and with software patents they could patent all or part of the driver if it's anything special and release the code under whatever license they deem appropriate.

If I was evaluating two pieces of expensive hardware that performed equally well I'd take the piece with open source drivers over the piece that didn't have open source drivers even if it cost more just for insurance on the investment. You'd think that having open source drivers would be a point that high end hardware manufacturers, especially new ones, could compete on.

Not really

Linux as a whole might take some blame if an older version worked with the hardware (say in kernel 2.4) , but a newer version (say kernel 2.6) didn't. This does happen on occasion, but it is generally fixed-up by either an OSS developer that wants to use the hardware, or the vendor (such as the Nvidia binaries).

Remember, Vista is purported to be somewhat of an upgrade/improvement over XP. That means that people expect it to do what XP does, and more. It's still MS windows, just a newer, shinier, bulkier ones.

So if your winmodem worked in 2.4.x and not in 2.6.x, you might have a legitimate gripe at linux. Generally such things come out in the next-version bugfixes, but issues do happen where a particular newer version does not like certain hardware, or the source-code for modules doesn't compile and no newer-version source is available. If there never was support for your winmodem in the first place (note, WINmodem is a good giveway that it's not non-windows friendly), then the blame rests somewhat on the manufacturer for not providing a driver, or at least specs for such. In the case of winmodems, the software pretty much is most of the product, so the manufacturers guard it fairly closely.

Re:No mention of DRM

Media Center records all content into the .ms-dvr format which contains DRM. However, since you have Media Center you have either Home Premium or Ultimate; therefor you could use Windows DVD Maker which will capture the video without DRM. Media Center's video capture is for TV shows and some of them like sports broadcasts require DRM. If you use the wrong tool for the job it could see it not working how you except.

Tag

Why do I get the feeling this was posted solely to let people use "itsatrap" as a tag?

My Vista Install

Burn the MSDN image, grab RAID drivers for my onboard RAID, put the drivers on my USB key, then boot the Vista install disk. Go through the usual setup with the drivers. Reboot. All hardware is auto-detected and drivers installed except for my Creative Audigy 2 sound card. Pull the drivers from their site and install. Update nVidia drivers while I'm at it. Works great, no problems.

Re:My Vista Install

And people survived trench warfare but that is no reason to throw a mustard gas party.

The simple truth is that right now most people will get zero benefit from Vista. And for some people they will actually loose functionality that they currently have.

throwing up my hands

Every time there is news like this the fanboys shout 'you shoulda known' and
'get new hardware'. I have a better idea. Let's call Vista not an upgrade but a wholesale replacement of your computer and many of your applications. Most of your data will work in the new system but that's about it.

No - Vista is barely less of an upgrade than switching from XP to a Mac.

Re:throwing up my hands

So, it's like moving to Linux but with the additional pleasures of both paying $200.00 and still not getting any useful bundled applications?

Re:throwing up my hands

Except that Linux has had practically universal network and soundcard support for years. Even if the network hardware only has Windows 2000 binary drivers, you could load them with the NDIS module...

It used to be that if you wanted all of your hardware to work, you ran Windows. Looks like the tables have turned.

Re:throwing up my hands

Yes.

Except, certain things in Vista still work better than under (say) Ubuntu, or a lot of other Linux distributions.

Like, say, 802.11 configuration.

Or perhaps, volume controls. I've given up on getting a proper working fucking volume control on my SB Live-equipped Ubuntu desktop machine.

Or Bluetooth. Such pain and trauma to configure a Bluetooth mouse with Linux, but it was straight-forward with Vista.

Or video drivers. Neither Vista nor XP has ever trashed my video drivers with an automatic update. Meanwhile, every time Ubuntu switches to a new nvidia-legacy driver, my desktop machine needs to be tickled again before X will work. (I know - I should just stick with the free nv driver, since there's no fucking games for Linux to make 3D worth caring about, anyway. But I like xscreensaver's GL hacks.)

Vista's not perfect, though. It killed support for DirectSound3D and EAX, making games less enjoyable to play (for me, anyway). However, EAX never worked at all in Linux, so I guess I don't feel "trapped" anymore than I do with Linux.

Re:throwing up my hands

For every anecdote, there's a counter anecdote:

802.11 works fine for me. Try network-manager/knetworkmanager. All clicky-clicky, and even better than XP's network support IMHO

Volume controls? You mean like the Fn+F6/F7 on my laptop that actually change the volume of my machine? Automatically, with no configuration, in Linux, on my laptop?

Bluetooth seems to work fine for me, too.

Video drives, I just did apt-get install nvidia-glx, and they've worked since then. With Beryl, I get 3D screensavers, everything I could want.

Re:throwing up my hands

I can set the volume using alsa-mixer, sure, but that's not the point: I can also route air traffic, compute particle physics, and map oil fields using alsa-mixer on an emu10k1. It's beyond complicated with this chipset, to the point that it borders on pedantically stupid.

Which is why I'd like to use the volume control on the Ubuntu desktop or taskbar or whatever-it-is. I think it may have worked at one point, but updates to something-or-other broke it. My situation is almost certainly complicated somewhat by the fact that I'm using the card's digital output for all audio, but that doesn't seem to present any particular complication to Certain Other operating systems.

But it doesn't matter, really. I gave up on it long ago. I've lost enough hours to making desktop Linux work completely, only to have largely unwanted software updates hose up the whole thing.

I don't even bother trying to run Linux on my laptop bare-metal anymore (the first time I closed the lid and the backlight stupidly stayed on, I could see where things were headed) though I do have a pretty functional install of Ubuntu working on VMWare under Vista.

And I'm not about to abandon my Gentoo mail and off-site backup servers for anything. But desktop Linux pretty much blows, these days.

I had a more consistant Linux desktop with Slackware and FVWM2, over a decade ago. One used to configure things, and they stayed configured: I used to tell people that the coolest part about Linux was that sometimes it was hard to make something work, but once you finally figured it out it would stay working indefinately.

But that's not the case anymore. It shames me to say that Windows is less of a moving target than a typical Linux desktop.

And all I wanted was a volume control.

Re:throwing up my hands

Every time there is news like this the fanboys shout 'you shoulda known' and 'get new hardware'. I have a better idea. Let's call Vista not an upgrade but a wholesale replacement of your computer and many of your applications. Most of your data will work in the new system but that's about it.

No - Vista is barely less of an upgrade than switching from XP to a Mac.

Sure, so what hardware and software did you have to replace?

Amount I've had to spend in addition to purchasing Vista: $0. I built my AMD Athlon 2700+, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro in 2003 (hardly new). All my software and scenarios work, including:

• Visual Studio 2005, including debugging without UAC prompts
• Subversion, TortoiseSVN
• Foxit Reader
• Paint.NET
• Nasa's World Wind
• ffdshow, Xvid codecs
• VLC
• Civilization 1 (for Windows 3.1), 2, and 4 (I don't have 3), Quake 1 through 4, Guild Wars, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, SimTower, SimCity 200, SimCity 4, Age of Empires 2, WarCraft 3, Diablo 1 and 2, and others. In fact, I don't recall a game that doesn't work.
• I've captured video from my camcorder, edited it, and performed video encoding without problems. No DRM invovled.
• I've ripped CDs at lossless rates (the builtin WMP supports WMA, WMA lossless, MP3 up to 320 kbps, and WAV), and burnt it. Again, no DRM involved.
• Was able to watch DVDs on my 1920x1200 monitor.
• Can access file shares on XP fine.
• Printing to both local and networked printers work; while typing this I connected to my brother's XP machine downstairs and printed to his printer. Setup was a couple mouse clicks.

I'd love to hear other people's experiences, but please include details.

Bastards

Vista won't recognise my C64 tape drive either! Those MS bastards! It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

And this is news how?

win98 -> 2000, lots of problems with lack of drivers for older hardware
2000 -> XP still problems with lack of drivers for older hardware (although maybe not as many)
XP -> Vista well, what do you think?

See? Even Windows Users Benefit from Open Specs

Once online, Creative's website told me that my sound card was a write-off. No Vista support would be forthcoming.

Interesting! Does this mean that we might start seeing Windows customers agitating for open hardware specs so that interested parties can pick up the ball dropped by the vendor and write their own drivers?

...Just like the Linux guys have been doing for the last <*cough*> years?

Oh, wait. You have to be "certified" by Microsoft to write a usable Vista driver. Never mind...

Schwab

Vista is great! (in a way)

Okay, it's bad for the poor people who have to buy new hardware because they can't get vista drivers for their existing stuff.

But it means a good load of ebay bargains for those of us running open source operating systems with support for just about everything built in.

I haven't actually noticed the bargains happening much yet, but they will come. Just like last time shortly after Windows XP came out. Second hand USB stuff was going for next to nothing on ebay.

wait a minute...

I can't even do an "oblig"!!! The article title already did :(

Re:MOD Article Author Retard...

People who run linux. If it ran on the last version, it is almost certain to run on the next. Unless it's 15 year old hardware. No, wait, most of that works too.

Re:MOD Post Author Retard...

Honestly, who does an OS upgrade and not check for hardware compatibility?

      If you RTFA, you'll see that he a) used a Microsoft app that checks your system for Vista compatibility before installing; b) replaced his incompatible hardware before the install with hardware stated to work with Vista by the manufacturer.

      Short of having someone lend him the hardware to try it out with Vista, I don't really see what else he could have done to avoid problems...

I feel your pain

It took me one day to get online. The detail is tedious and highly technical: reinstalling drivers and router firmware didn't work, but after many trial and error tweaks to Vista's TCP/IP settings, I had internet access.

So, what you're saying it's kind of like installing an oddball wi-fi card on Linux. Except without the option of reading hundreds of pages of obscure documentation until you've transformed yourself into a mutant linux hotplugging guru.

In a nutshell, the differnce between getting things working in Linux and Windows seems to be this. Linux is like being parachuted into the wilderness with a hammer, forge, and load of pig iron. Windows is like being parachuted into the wilderness with an impressive looking knife that snaps in two if you don't use it very, very carefully.

For Non-Geeks

So is this about right for typical end users such as myself?

- wait at least one year after a new release of operating system

- if you can't do it yourself, pay someone else to evaluate your existing pc to see if an upgrade is possible and if it is possible, to make sure you get exactly what you need

- make sure the person you pay for evaluation has no stake in selling you a new pc

- if an upgrade is not possible, secure your old system as much as humanly possible and ride it until using the old system is no longer possible, plausible or just plain insane (like one of my friends using Windows 95 until last week and my cousin switched her over to Ubuntu)

- when all else dies by a new pc

- find something useful to do with your old pc (donate it, etc.)

IT'S A TRAP

IT'S A TRAP [itsatrap.net]

PEBKAC?

I've never seen or used Vista, or the author's system, and I may just be a little grumpy this morning. But, based on his descriptions, the author sounds like someone who thinks he knows more about computers than he really does.

From the article:

Now here is the dirty little secret of all the expensive PC helpers out there. Upgrading hardware is really easy... it's usually just a case of carefully lifting out the old and slotting in the new piece of kit.

Uhm, no it isn't, not really. As the author later discovers (but still doesn't realize), getting hardware to work often involves hardware, drivers and OS (and sometimes other software). While we all wish it were that easy, us "expensive PC helpers" have the skills to deal with those cases when it isn't.

For example:

...even after a full day of tinkering with various network wizards

Wizards? This suggests that the author does not know how to get to the properties of whatever network protocol (I'm assuming TCP/IP) he's using and configure them directly.

But which mysterious "PCI input device" was lacking a driver? And what was the "unknown device" flagged up by Vista?

You can find out by following the instructions at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/298837 [microsoft.com].

I'm not defending Vista, but I also bristle when people devalue and disrespect people in IT/IS. We make things look easy because we're good at what we do. :P

Here's my appraoch to new Windows versions

1. Wait for SP1
2. Wait for SP2 ...
N. Wait for SPN
N+1. New version of Windows, GOTO 1

Wonder if that GOTO will give any of the old timers nostalgia attacks

Life imitates tags

Why do I have the feeling that this whole story was written so that for once the "itsatrap" tag guy could be relevant?

...not so good

My wife bought a new HP running vista a couple of weeks ago; she loves it for the most part: media center, dvr capability, all shiny and pretty. However, the lack of hardware support is maddening; her new quickcam wouldn't work on vista (conflicted with the hauppage tuner card), but miraculously the microsoft lifecam worked fine...hm. Funny, HP doesn't even have drivers for the current-model officejet we bought with the HP PC...sigh. Also, I got a bsod this AM trying to do something really tricky, like look at a .jpg. The allow/cancel popup really is maddening, though...the apple commercials got it right. There are some programs that require 4 or 5 confirmations.

Product upgrade or Software upgrade?

Due to the issues I have had in the past with upgrades, I don't bother to do just software upgrades. Here are my reasons;

That old hardware was fine for running some stuff. An upgrade to just the software leaves the system in an unstable state with not all features hardware or software supported in most cases. Most of my systems are running the original OS on them with the exceptions where the usefullness of the new applications outweighed the loss of the old applications. For example, upgrading from Windows 98 and 2K to Ubuntu is a great move. I lose the upgrade patch cycle, endless security upgrades and AV upgrades and instead get a stable machine for web applications.

I still have my Windows 95 laptop. It is useless for online use and is a sitting duck. It still makes a great MIDI workstation sitting on my synth. It has no USB. It is at it's maximum capacity of EDO memory at 72 Megs. Upgrading the software would be a bad mistake.

More modern hardware gets Linux upgrades. It is relatively pain free. It provides stability and security with lots of new features. I don't have to spend a lot of money to find out if it won't work and needs a hardware upgrade to get it going. Too bad Vista does not have a free Live CD for testing old hardware.

I'll get a new purchased OS when it comes on the new hardware. Then it is up to the vendor to make sure everything is working and compatible. It saves a lot of headaches. I have not seen any reason to spend the money at this time.

Re:A Trap for Idiots

Considering that Microsoft says a 1 GHz PC with 512 MB RAM will run Vista, he probably expected a working system.

I think Vista uses more RAM to display a window than my OS/2 Warp system used to run half a dozen apps (I had 8 MB of RAM on an AMD 486/40).

Re:A Trap for Idiots

Wow, completely missed the section of the article where he clearly says he *ran* said Upgrade adviser (which is what led to a Graphics card update among a few other things) but that he later still had problems with unsupported/non-functional hardware the adviser didn't give a peep about, huh? Give you a hint... second part of the article after "A blunt message"... starts with "But this was probably not enough, so I downloaded Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor."

Sheesh.

Re:A Trap for Idiots

Umm, at least a baseline support for that hardware? For a company so prided on backwards compatibility, Microsoft sure has given the finger hardcore to a lot of people when it comes to Vista.

For comparison: I have an Apple iMac G3 400MHz with 768MB RAM and a 40GB disk happily running OS X 10.4. This machine also has a (nonupgradeable) 8MB ATI video card. Note that this computer, at this moment, is almost 8 years old, and runs Tiger like a champ. Sure, I don't get all the cool effects, but the key is I didn't have to do a damn thing to make it work, it just did, and it doesn't even attempt the effects it can't handle. I can browse the internet, use iTunes, type in Word, Excel, Pages or Keynote, check my email, and even watch DVD's. And you know what? It runs 10.4 FASTER than it runs 10.3. Given, it's still a bit slower than OS 9, but given the added capabilities of it and it still being useable in OS X, that's a pretty damn good trade-off.

Re:Starting to annoy...

... doesn't have a single decent image-browser ...

Gwenview [sourceforge.net], Picasa [google.com]...

... dc++ client ...

Is in production [berlios.de]. Check the CVS [berlios.de] for latest builds.

... office suite ...

I really don't understand why you included this. OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org], KOffice [koffice.org], AbiWord [abisource.com]; all more than comparable to MS Word.

... Not to mention decent looking fonts ...

In Debian based distros, sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts. Rather simple. Other distros have packages of their own.

In short, I'm under the impression that you haven't really tried to use a modern Linux distro for more than the five minutes it took you to stereotype it, say, "This sucks because it's not what I'm used to!", and go back to Windows.