MusicMakeMyHeadPound: Your viewpoint is correct. It's not your problem. Others seem to think it is their problem. And that they're going to solve their problem by way of verbal and textual diarrhea.

I'm just pointing out, as a reasonable level-headed person that has no particular reason to favor any system, that Microsoft has a rather large responsibility to juggle. They produce the OS that most end-user applications are made for. When they try to shake things up by doing something different, they can either cripple their initiative by pandering to old code and developers that don't like change, or they can push for at least a semblance of competition with the likes of Apple and OSS.

Maybe someone at Microsoft is realizing that the overall aesthetic of the OS is pretty damn important and that the developers will cry about having to port, but will probably be brought around. The way I see it, tons of businesses will stick with XP, but then some company will make an app for Vista in a market that nobody else has yet... then greed kicks in, competitors surface, and capitalism thrives, etc. Or maybe that's just in a perfect world.

I got my new machine in mid February. It's a last years model and came with XP with the promise of a free upgrade to Vista. The new Vista CD/DVD's ship next week but I'm sticking with XP until it craps out. I've heard there are problems with the XP to Vista upgrade in regards to setting up the HDD partition to separate OS from storage in a 160 GB HDD. I'm guessing my "free" upgrade will count as a sale even though it won't be installed and running.

Oh and on the RAM issue, Vista is a little more bloaty. I have 1 Gigabyte in my slightly older desktop and 2 Gigabytes in my laptop, both dual boot right now (hooray to my school for free copies of Vista). On both computers XP runs about the same, with of course the laptop letting me have more shiat open. With Vista I notice that extra gig a RAM, whereas with XP I didn't notice it so much.

Fark the RAM though, the true flaw of Vista is how much of your HD it takes up. Jesus. I almost suspect it branded the MS logo onto the magnetic disk it went after that sucker so hard.

09:55:25 PM Evil Twin Skippy

Heh. Cute.

Computer science PhD student. Vista is the main reason my next PC purchase will be a Mac.

GW_Diesel
We had a Microsoft consultant in last week that said sales were not good on vista.. WTF??!?!?! I think Microsoft is feeding a bunch of BS on this one..

As I posted earlier in this thread:
I wouldn't be surprised if they added in all the 2006 Christmas PC sales coming with XP and "we'll send you Vista for a 20 buck processing fee when it comes out"-coupons.

Evil Twin Skippy: You had me almost a little impressed, and mostly satisfied, with your credentials and their application to this subject... but then you repeated that idiotic joke that's been around since before I knew what the Internet was.

And now you're just another Farker who thinks he's witty.

I got a new laptop about a month ago with XP on it, it had a big "VISTA PREMIUM READY" sticker on it so when my college started making available free copies of Vista Business I decided to take the plunge. First let me tell you that while my laptop is new it is by no means high end, it is about as cheap as laptops get; 700 bucks got me 1 gig of ram, turion 64 x2 and integrated ati graphics with shared memory, so the os is actually only seeing about 894 megs of the installed ram, the rest is reserved for graphics.

On this system aero glass runs fine. The computer is fairly responsive, about the same as XP was. There was a learning curve the first week or so, overall most stuff works the same as in XP but there are lots of subtle little differences that can be confusing at first. My main gripe so far is a lack of compatible software, 98% of stuff works fine as is or with compatibility mode enabled, but some stuff is still not fully compliant. I'm sure that will change relatively soon though, once it does I will be a happy camper. For the most part I like Vista and think it is a worthy successor to xp, a little late but still worthy, aero glass is cool, the sidebar is cool and there are lots of little touches that are neat, for example you can adjust the volume of each program individually.

Just glancing through the thread I see some legitimate gripes and a lot of criticism that is just ridiculous. UAC can be annoying, but you can turn it off if you don't like it, aero glass does require directx 9 graphics hardware but it's a totally optional feature, honestly running vista in basic mode is fine, it's basically like xp, aero glass is purely eye candy. It does use more resources than xp but by todays standards I wouldn't say it's out of line, if you have a fast pentium 3, a gig of ram and say a 30 gig hard drive you are good to go. And if you don't have that then just keep using xp, it will serve you well for awhile yet. Judging by some comments there are lots of people that would prefer if new operating systems never required more resources, maybe they would all be happy if we were still running windows 3.1 on our 386s'. In case you haven't noticed computers hardware gets faster all the time, is it really unreasonable for software to take advantage of that? And a lot of the resources Vista eats up are for beneficial stuff, not just bloat, for example it does a lot of caching in ram, after awhile you notice some programs literally "pop" open the instant you click them.

ChadManMn: I have twenty years of experience on a multitude of platforms. I can tell you, for certain, that backwards compatibility is obtained by adding to, not taking from, the capabilities of the base system.

I have 28...:D. That said, that can only go so far for only so long. The current compatibility structure really should have ended with win2k. Winxp really should have been written from the ground up. Though this is my opinion only just like yours.

windows xp 64 is a joke.

64 vista is nice from what I tested on the RC2

I guess it depends on the user

I dual boot xp pro and ubuntu and never have any problems with anything.

/I guess the advantage of building so many pc's over the years

jcuffe

And now you're just another Farker who thinks he's witty.

Who's witty, and who's website pops up first when you type his name into google.

/Though Wikipedia has beaten out searches for my handle "Evil Twin Skippy" for the last month or two.

What I don't understand is why software (OS) is so slow nowadays.

I mean hell, I remember running Linux with X with a 40 Mhz 386 and 4 MB of RAM (four farking megs; Windows 3.1 ran on that too). But shiat, I remember running AmigaOS in 512K of RAM. And fark that, GEOS ran in 64K RAM on a farking C64.

Basically they all provided pretty much the same functionality you use today except the look is different (a new set of graphics on those old systems and they would look the same).

Really, where the fark is the processing going? I know we have neato programming languages and applications now but that doesn't explain why the basic OS and windowing environment is practically identical yet requires insane amounts of RAM and CPU while still being slow. W...T...F?!

I do IT for a living. Think your little computer there is a big expensive power machine? I build servers that THE DISK ARRAYS cost $12k on. And the tapes to back them up cost more. My budget this year for data center improvements is around half a million dollars.

So what. Four years ago I bought a single server that cost over $1 million. Doesn't make me special. Just means that a certain company's data center has a big freaking server that looks sorta like a futuristic refrigerator. But from the command line, it looks pretty much like every other server from the same company. Who cares.

Easiest way to figure out Vista is a load of crap just out to suck money, there are six versions of it. WTF? Either give people the full deal or don't bother. None of this pay for more junk. The only way it would work would be if they offered a totally stripped to the bones version. Which if course MS will never do.

Who's witty? The person who googles someone as an immediate Weeners when challenged, that's who. I don't give a damn who you are, and I don't care if you know who I was two years ago.

What is bloated about XP compared to 2k? You can turn the Luny theme off, disable the themes service and others and by the time your done I've found it to be as lean running and more stable than 2000

I was referring to Vista.
However, I really see no advantage of using XP over Win2K as they're both based on the very stable NT kernel.
XP has the reoccurring hassle with the activation BullShiat
To me until I can't use a new piece of hardware because it's not compatible with 2K I see absolutely no reason to switch from 2K.

p.s. You don't know what you're talking about re the differences in requirements for the 2 operating systems.
Win Xp really should have at least 512mb of RAM.
Win 2K gets by fine on a LOT LESS THAN THAT!
I've had to add more RAM to a lot of people's machines because various shops are too stupid to tell customers that fact before they upgrade someone's OS to XP.

jcuffe

Oh, that's so cute. You don't care, but you feel compelled to tell the world how much you don't care.

Can I get the voices in your head anything to drink while I'm up?

God--: Winxp really should have been written from the ground up. Though this is my opinion only just like yours.

I'd rather see Intel ditch backwards compatibility. You can only do so much with chip architecture when you're forever trying to make sure it's backwards compatible. Software isn't quite the same thing.

Hm. Bit too quick on the response there, apparently you were asking me to type... your name into google.

Which is actually worse, really. You life revolves around the Internet. Good job.

MAC. Also BOOBIES

that is all

I was at the local Vista release party here in Denver, I have had Vista installed since release date and I have booted in to it like 40 times total, half of those being reboots for patches after I eventually do boot in to it.

I can't get any of my old games to work or pretty much anything that was a reason for me to boot in to Windows in the first place. I really don't have much reason to boot Vista any more. I run Ubuntu on a seperate 500g drive and love it. It does everything Vista can do, only it's stable. I can emulate GTA:SA better in Linux than I can get it to run on Vista at all. It's nice to have if I mess up a kernel recompile and want a no-hastle DVD session or something. Otherwise that it was a waste of money.

I went with the upgrade but Ed McAffrey was there signing stuff and they gave out free food, so that was great.


/Yay, Eddie!

jcuffe

Which is actually worse, really. You life revolves around the Internet. Good job.

The pay is crap but the fringe benefits are nice.

Good thing you defused the argument there, as I don't think it would really go anywhere. You're a professional businessman and I'm a 20 year-old ex-mil excited about leaving the state again for a security-installation business trip.

We probably have slightly different views on what is or isn't important.

/diff'rent strokes

Evil Twin Skippy

I'll be honest with you, I don't know enough about Vista to be able to say whether it is good or not. My reason for defending it was because I've so often heard people say it is crap, and then when I ask why it is crap they just say because someone told them it was crap.

You sound like you have enough experience with computers to make a credible opinion, so I'll have to ask you, if you could make the next generation Windows OS, how would you make it? Or if you could change anything about Vista, what would it be? Are there any alternatives?

I know these are pretty vague questions that would probably need to go into much technical detail but maybe if you could simplify. It's just that I'd rather hear someone's honest opinion than someone reiterating someone else's.

delphi_ote
Computer science PhD student. Vista is the main reason my next PC purchase will be a Mac.

Kind of a silly hardline stance, isn't it?

I just spec'd my new workstation. I chose Windows XP just because I have a mild distrust of Vista. My test Vista platform burps compatibility warnings when I launch (of all things) Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. My home Vista system shows the same compatibility warning running Zoo Tycoon 2, yet another modern Microsoft application. Go figure. No problems to date, just warnings.

I had the choice of going with MacOS with my workstation. They're popular on any campus. Zealots breed there too.

A 2GB dual monitor would have cost a cool $4200 out the door. The equivalent Dell cost $2150. Not kidding or making it up. God honest truth. Apple really does charge twice as much.

Evil Twin Skippy: NEWB. I'm a NEWB.


Dude, you're like a total nub scrub. ;)


Anyway, rule of thumb folks when it comes to MS Windows: wait for at least Service Pack 1. 2kPro was great until 1.5 years ago for me. I needed a new drive so it made sense that and I got tired of having to muck about the registry for drives over 120gb.

7of7

You have got to be Steve Ballmer. Your unrelenting ineptitude and irrational admiration for Microsoft should be classified as a medical condition. You troll every MS post on Digg.com and you troll here, and who knows where else. Seriously, its lame. Its time to move out teh parents basement and get a job.

Hand Banana

Yeah, because RAM is so horribly expensive these days. Does it even matter, who has less than 512MB anymore anyway. I think the improved support, features and stability of XP are worth the paltry increase of RAM it may require. Though I've had XP happily running on 256MB with no problem at all.

Dude, RAM may not be expensive monetarily, but it's still one of the slowest components in the machine. Jump up and down and get a big steaming woody about your 3Ghz processor. Then run the number and realize that the best machine running on commidity hardware has ram that runs at about 667Mhz.

So an operating system that doesn't efficiently use RAM probably isn't getting a whole lot done.

Wait...wait....wait...How exactly are people here comparing Mac OS X with Vista in a legitimately fair manner? That's a lot like trying to compare a brand new Hyundai Tiburon with a new Porsche Cayman.


Now, I've been using WinXP since I traded my old Powermac G5 in to build a custom gaming rig 2 years ago, and while I have tweaked my installation of XP to be very stable, very fasy, and completely virus and malware free since then, I still deeply miss the sheer craftsmanship, practicality, and ease of use found in Mac OS X.


The option of a Unix command line is far more versatile than any Command Prompt or administrative activities you can do in Windows XP or Vista, and Mac OS X's seamless integration of OpenGL is enough even to make the latest iteration of DirectX jealous. Oh, and I can't forget that I never had significant OS bugs and the threat of viruses and malware present like I do now (although I have the right software to keep them away).


The real kicker, however, is that Mac OS X was designed from the ground up in 2000-2001, where as even Vista is just a pretty graphical interface on top of a 64-bit extension of a 32-bit OS that was an extension of a 16-bit OS that only started NOT booting from MS-DOS in the last decade. I guess the Macintosh analogy for that would be running an OS-theme program on Mac OS 9.2.2 to make it look like Mac OS 10.4.


And hell, I didn't even talk about how wonderful Ubuntu is....


The bottom line: unless you're tied to Valve's Steam (like I am), or need to run games or software that is Windows only, why put up with Vista? I'll admit, i never got around to looking at it in depth , but the thought of integrated DRM, an optimal RAM level of 2 gigabytes, and the lack of graphics drivers (because now they all need to comply with that stupid DRM) kinda scares me away from it. I guess I'll learn to love WinXP even more.

RaceBoatDriver: My test Vista platform burps compatibility warnings when I launch (of all things) Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. My home Vista system shows the same compatibility warning running Zoo Tycoon 2, yet another modern Microsoft application. Go figure. No problems to date, just warnings.

I have yet to get any warnings for my games or other useful apps. The only thing that bombs, is my Cisco VPN software for work.. Oh NOOOOES! no over time for me I guess :)

2007-03-26 10:05:23 PM God--

ChadManMn: I have twenty years of experience on a multitude of platforms. I can tell you, for certain, that backwards compatibility is obtained by adding to, not taking from, the capabilities of the base system.

I have 28...:D. That said, that can only go so far for only so long. The current compatibility structure really should have ended with win2k. Winxp really should have been written from the ground up. Though this is my opinion only just like yours.

Nice to meet another veteran!

But, I still disagree. For instance, why force vendors to switch to wdm if they dont need it? The only reason is that Microsoft does not want to support the older api's. How does that benefit the consumer? The obvious answer would be a reduction in cost of the end product, but I'm not sure I've seen that. Hardware costs have plummeted due to competition, software costs have steadily increased.

/2 cents
//if we're counting, I have 22 years and 7 months of professional experience, and another 2.5 years before I had a real job :)
///outta here, have fun all!

Personally I think Vista is much nicer than XP. The interface is certainly more well designed and the security at least pretends to be Unix-like. I'd never use it myself since I prefer Mac on the desktop and Linux on my servers, but for those stuck in the world of Windows it's a nice upgrade.

With that said I still haven't met a Windows user in person who actually liked it. In fact, as I type this my wife is yelling at me to get Vista off her computer because she can't stand it. That seems to reflect most of my customers' views as well. All my clients are avoiding it like the plague. Several went out and bought new PCs right before the switch to help delay an upgrade.

It's funny, Mac users sit on edge waiting for new versions of their operating system while Windows users look for a ledge at the mere mention of an upgrade.

Here is a story on Slashdot about successfully getting a refund for Vista from Dell.

I have two questions for all those that think Vista uses too much memory: why do you think it uses too much memory? What is Vista doing with it all?

/I know the correct answers, do you?

jcuffe

The day we all see eye to eye is the day I consider suck starting a pistol. We all have different wants needs and desires in this world.

As it should be.

/May the force be with you
//In the Lao Tzu sense

Well, if you delay the release date of your product after a bunch of people already pre-ordered it from computer manufacturers, allowing even more people to pre-order it, then yeah, you'll sell double the amount of software than you did previously.

There are three kinds of lies. Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
-Twain

My father bought a Toshiba laptop that came with XP installed and a Vista upgrade disk. Vista majorly screwed it up, and the techs he bought it from couldn't recover (possible it did something nasty to the Master Boot Record of the disk). He ended up bring the laptop back and buying an Acer with XP, which also came with a Vista disk that my father promptly put into storage.

Hand Banana: Though I've had XP happily running on 256MB with no problem at all.

I've put XP Embedded on a system with 256 MB of RAM and 384 MB of secondary (flash) storage.

Took like 10 minutes to boot and start the apps I was running, but it worked.

DonCarcharo: I type this my wife is yelling at me to get Vista off her computer because she can't stand it.

Tell your wife to lay off the crack, Vista rocks for me. I have had very few issues with it, and I enjoy the *nix command ability as well. Seriously, everyone is jumping up and down over an OS that is new and they do not want to learn something new. It's not like I have never used windows, I run 2000+ desktops in my company, and we started ordering Vista already for systems. Before anyone wants to whine about it, they should run it for a week then see how good it actually is.

Tell your wife to lay off the crack, Vista rocks for me. I have had very few issues with it, and I enjoy the *nix command ability as well.

One word: cygwin.

Ok I'm really out of here now.

ChadManMn: One word: cygwin.

Ok I'm really out of here now.

Shush. I used that in XP, but I like the 2 shells that I can get with Vista.

Betting against a new Windows is exceedingly stupid. Microsoft doesn't have to "sell" Windows. Penetration will happen over time, just as if it was a fact of nature. It's like asking whether there will ever come a time when most computers have 16GB of RAM.

Hand Banana: I think he was trying to make the point that the ease of adding more RAM to your computer doesn't mitigate the wrongness of wasting RAM.

Ugh, I hate all the FUD that gets spewed out about Vista.

Now, I'm not saying that Vista is for everyone. There's certainly reasons to not upgrade, including compatibility issues. With that said, there's almost no reason why a person purchasing a new machine should avoid Vista either.

First, regarding memory usage: Vista is the first Windows OS to actually USE the several hundreds of dollars you've spent on memory. Windows XP, as well as most *nix variants ARE NOT USING YOUR FULL INVESTMENT. You may have 2GBs of RAM or more, but if its not being used, what good is it? Vista loads commonly used files and programs into memory for quick access. Thats why memory usage is so "high" compared to Windows XP. If a program actually needs that memory for other data, Vista releases it instantly without qualms. This is what SuperFetch is. It's been used on *nix based machines for a long time now, though it's never been accessible to the standard user, because it generally requires writing nifty scripts individually (something your general *buntu user would have a heart attack doing). In other words, Vista is the first to make this technology mainstream and automated. If I hear one more person comment about Vista's memory usage in a negative manner, their getting my knees slammed into their farking balls.

Second, regarding compatability: *MAJOR* changes have been made to Vista's security model and kernel. It is not an understatement to say that Vista is a completely new OS from a security standpoint. The changes made are extensive. Yes, there are some compatibility issues with some software (most notably networking-related software, which is compounded by significant changes made to networking). Unfortunately this *HAD* to happen to fix many, many significant flaws in Windows security in the past. Read some of the TechNet articles on the changes in security model and kernel. The fact of the matter is, Microsoft did an excellent job at producing a safe secure OS. Please, for the love of farking god, do NOT disable UAC. Here is a great post on what UAC and how you deserve a kick in the nuts if you disable it. I'd also like to go on record and say that anyone that biatches about UAC and praises Linux (especially *buntu) is a farking hypocrite.

Regarding game performance, nVidia just got off their ass and released a decent driver not too long ago. Both ATI and nVidias offerings are still somewhat immature. Give it some time, and you will find DirectX games will be running just as fast under Vista as they do under Windows XP. MS dropping OpenGL support is a pretty shiatty thing to do IMO. OpenGL games probably won't even catch up to Windows XP speed, but I would expect to see some modest increases with better video drivers.

I'm pretty sure I've missed a few keypoints, but that should get us started. . .

Hand Banana

I'll speak in small words so you understand. All those Gigabytes of RAM that are chewed up. Yes the ones that "don't matter" to you. How do they get there? Do elves drop them off? No.

The operating system has to slug it all off the disk and into memory. And once in memory all that crap has to be indexed, and kept up to date, etc. The larger the blocks of RAM you have to address, the longer your seek time. It's like having to find one house on a block, VS. any house on the street in town, VS. any house in a zipcode.

Have I lost you yet?

Ok, now you take all that extra crap, and you throw it into memory. It's like driving your car around with 1000lbs of concrete in the trunk. Do you have a mental image yet? Sure it's fine if your are running at highway speeds, but you get into stop and go traffic and you are in a world of hurt. The guys in big trucks don't notice as much, and that's why the power users aren't crying into their beer while Joe Sixpack with teh year old laptop is.