Discussion on:

Don't be misled by these 10 Windows Vista myths

Have you heard some of the same skewed facts and misinformation described here? Did any of these clarifications come as a surprise to you?

there are some issues that I had.
The first is security. Although there have been security improvements, the SW is more bloated and there are many known issues that need to be worked on. The article states that Vista is more secure than XP, but it has yet to be proven.

Also, the article mentions pricing and states that they are exactly the same as XP versions, except with more features. But what about the features that were ripped out, or changed around.

The arguments w2ktechman makes are weak. On one hand he acknowledges there are security improvements, but then indicates that it hasn't been proven that Vista is more secure than XP. Using his own argument, it hasn't been proven that Vista is *less* secure than XP.

However, we can point to Vista's UAC feature as an example where security has improved and there is no real equivalent in XP. One has to conclude by just this feature alone that Vista *is* more secure than XP. It is difficult to argue, at this point in time, that Vista is less secure due to the number of reported bugs as compared to XP. Only with sufficient time and analysis, will we be able to determine whether the security improvements Microsoft made in Vista actually paid off.

Whether the software is bloated or not is a matter of opinion. Let's not confuse additional features with bloat. You could say *any* software is bloated, if you don't use the majority of it's features. But that doesn't mean that it's bloated for someone else who does use the majority of it's features. What you might desire is the ability to remove features that you don't personally use. Both XP and Vista allow you to do that, but maybe not at the granular level you might like.

Lastly, if you are going to argue "there are many known issues..." then provide references to a few issues that support your argument instead of waving your hands in the air, otherwise they just look like the FUD the article was trying to dispel.

Install it without IE7 because you want to use an other browser.

Additional features aren't bloat, unnecessary/unwanted features are.

So not a matter of opinion, but a matter of fact.

I welcome the foundation behind UAC, but I feel the constant alert / query will really annoy people. Until a lot more apps come out that work with UAC so the user doesn't get queried, I see problems.

Particularly people running as admin and then hammering the return key flat every time the dialog comes up without looking at what it says.

Are you sure?

oops

I did not state that Vista was less secure, only that it has not been proven yet that it is more secure. You are reading between the lines, and not at what I wrote.

Bloated SW has more parts that can be problematic. And yes, most SW from large vendors are bloated as they add new features often to create more capitol by selling the new and improved versions.
Vista is a much larger OS than previous ones, yes it does do more as well, but being larger (many more lines of code) can create more unexpected results (security holes, bugs, etc.).

And finally, it is well documented, even by MS that there are many known issues/bugs with the OS. That didnt stop them from releasing Win2k which had more than 28,000 upon release date, and it did not stop them from releasing Vista either.
So your assessment of my comments was really not correct. If you are going to accuse me of not liking Vista, you are correct, and I have never stated otherwise. All that aside, I was just commenting on the article and a few issues that I saw with it, although I did like the article.

Features are not bloat. Bloated software is that which is written with more lines of code necessary to get the job done. Any particular feature of a program can be written efficiently or in a non-efficient manner, hence bloat.

Uninstallable "features" are bloat.

Take the Firewall for example. I use a hardware firewall at home; I don't want Windows Firewall, I can disable it, but I cannot remove it.

It is bloat.

And the UAC is quite annoying. It is the first thing I turned off. It should be made so that it is can be made more granular. Accessing the system files; sure. Changing screen resolution, I think not.

If I download and install the latest and greatest version of Mandriva or Debian or whatever and it has all kinds of "cool/new" features that I can't get to work on my laptop that is a PII 166 mhz, then can I say Linux is "bloated"?

Especially since so many Linux zealots on here rant and rave on how Linux will run so fast on just about anything. If they are so right, man, I'm taking up dumpster diving and finding me a sweet ole x386 for my personal pleasure. It should be a speed demon on Linux.

I can't uninstall all those cool new Linux features unless I take the next 2 years, read a library or two of books, watch a few videos, and otherwise piss away a vast swath of my time learning a new OS.

Linux does not require a library of books. Learning various versions of Windows requires re-learning everything all over again.

For basic use of Linux (install, configure, use) yes, a book is the best way to start. Just like DOS, Windows, Mac. When you first learned to use Windows, did you just turn it on and know everything??? Learning any new OS requires a bit of LEARNING, that includes reading.
What a dumba$$ post you made.

If you think for a second that anyone can install, use and understand Linux after only using Windows all their life, you're a fool.

I have 7+ years in the tech biz and I have tried Linux numerous times only to be so totally frustrated that I have once again tossed it aside.

You can fool yourself by thinking Linux is easy but the rest of us know better.

I stated that all OS's require a bit of learning, and that 1 book, not the library + videos + others that you stated.

Windows required learning too! You werent born with the knowledge were you?

Learn to read before sputtering off even more dumba$$ remarks tardboy!

Now that's mature.

Sure one book can teach you Linux as long as it's 500+ pages with web references.

And good luck asking any friends, family, co-workers, etc for help when you need it because 90% will be using Windows and know nothing about Linux.

had a bad day from data recovery failure. Sorry for the bad remark.

However, learning basic usage for Linux does not require a 500 page book even. It is as easy to pick up as Win is. maybe a 50-80 page book could get one started and running. Learning mid to advanced Linux will require a 500 page book. Learning to master Linux would require a small library.
You are correct though that if a problem happens, everyone already knows Windows so verbal support and asking around is much harder in Linux.

I whole-heartedly agree! My biggest, longest lasting dislike about Windows, and most Microsoft software is bloat: anything installed that I did not ask for, do not want, do not need, and is not required for stable function of the OS/Software Package. I have never used, nor will ever use WMC, Windows Firewall, Outlook/Outlook Express, ... et cetera. They are wholly useless to me.
As such, installing such items that I do not use, and are not required by the OS for stable operation (I've forcefully removed them piece-by-piece with no stability issues) constitute bloat for me.
Microsoft needs to do just a few easy things to make an OS worthy of modern users hard-earned cash:
1) allow total control over what is/is not installed. If it is not 100% necessary for the OS to run, it's an option, period!
2) Support, or allow others to support, all available hardware. There is no reason why I have issues in addressing and recognition of my two-cpu mobo out of the box. I have 2 AMD 64X2 5200+ chips installed. They run wonderfully and are recognized and addressed properly in XP Media Center 2005; Why can't Vista see that there are four cores on two separate chips. That's not marketing and licensing, that's poor coding, and poor environmental awareness.
3) Allow support for non-windows media formats. It doesn't have to be in WMP 11, just allow Vista to install other software that includes DRM-Free software code. BSPlayer and WinAmp are both widely distributed, making up more than reportedly 70% of the most used media software across platforms, and almost 50% on Windows systems. Blocking this software from installing by default, and requiring extensive computer knowledge to install them, is also poor coding. Microsoft may like DRM, the vast majority of consumers the world-over don't. There is no law that states that legally purchased music in one platform may not ever be played in another. Microsoft is not God and Judge.
Fix those problems, and we're back on track.

Not only should the UAC be made more granular, but so should the package selection at install time. I'm not a fan of Red Hat, but take the RPM: you select a package - if it has any dependencies on other packages it tells you. You can then decide as to whether you want those packages on your system, or if you'd prefer to give it a miss. This way, you see what packages are a neccessity and which ones are optional extras. Works a charm. Many versions of Linux that I prefer (including Suse 10 +) also have this feature.

"...I have 7+ years in the tech biz and I have tried Linux numerous times only to be so totally frustrated that I have once again tossed it aside..."

This explains why you have such an aversion to Linux and anything else that is not from Microsoft, what you work with every day.

Not all technical people have the trouble with Linux you are having. You should consider this as something you should work on. There is nothing wrong with Linux. Linux is wonderful.

Most programmers I know, and I know a lot, are self-taught masters on multiple platforms from handhelds (Palm, Windows CE), to desktops (Windows, Linux, Mac, DOS, OS/2), to servers (Windows, Linux, Unix), to mainframes (IBM's z/OS).

Personally, I always look forward to the opportunity to work on a new platform, and I have never set one aside yet.

Don't give up. Persevere through the early frustrations. You'll find that you can master multiple platforms. And, each one you master will make the next one easier to master.

And, stop posting negative crap about Linux since the problem is really within you.

Looking at replies to your post, they are going into a tirade about Linux being bloatware. Since when is Linux part of this discussion? We are discussing Vista. Please stay on topic.

Are you guys serious about space? As features are disabled, they are not taking resources (other than disk space), so what is the issue?

IE7 cant be uninstalled, who cares? This is again an issue of disk space. Just because it is there does not mean that it has to be used.

Disk space? Seriously, 750 gig hard drives are less than $200, and we are worried about 50 megs?

Your argument is exactly the reason that, while computers keep growing exponentially in capabilities, we end up not being able to do any more -- but we can do the old stuff with a bunch of new shiny annoyances tacked on.

It seems like Deb was reaching a bit for some of the myths. I don't think I've ever heard about Vista not being able to dual boot.

Also, when she's talking about video cards - I have it good. I have a nice video card that'll handle it just fine. However, I know that out of my entire IT staff, about 80% of them have video cards that have less than 128 Mb of video RAM, and older Pentium 4 PCs. Although a GeForce 5200 may be "inexpensive" for some, it still means that they'd have to buy an upgrade, and not everyone has $80 (that's just a random stab at how much it costs) to buy a replacement video card.

Add to that the ever-increasing senior population who are less up-to-date with technology, and you end up with a lot of people who will not be getting Vista without buying a new PC.

Personally, I don't like having different versions of Windows. It only multiplies the different number of operating systems I have to know about in order to troubleshoot if an issue gets to me. As much as I hate those biased, stupid PC-vs-Mac commercials, the latest one that talks about Mac only having one version DOES have some appeal.

If you think that having a couple of versions of Windows is fun to support -- try Linux.

With over 500 'popular distros' to choose from -- multiplied by the number of different tools, utilities and applications tacked on to make them the least bit functional -- you have a nightmare on your hands.

Ever hear of anyone needing to 'recompile portions of the os' to get anything to work in Windows? No they can't, and no, they don't need to.

If you think that having a couple of versions of Windows is fun to support -- try Linux.

With over 500 'popular distros' to choose from -- multiplied by the number of different tools, utilities and applications tacked on to make them the least bit functional -- you have a nightmare on your hands.

Ever hear of anyone needing to 'recompile portions of the os' to get anything to work in Windows? No they can't, and no, they don't need to.

I've never recompiled Linux.

I've had things that don't work of course, usually the result of some MS psychophant, Toshiba for instance.

As for the crack about functional, well you definitely need to go back to class.

If the range of Vista options is good, then those in Linux Distro's must be awesome yes?

"Ever hear of anyone needing to 'recompile portions of the os' to get anything to work in Windows? No they can't, and no, they don't need to."

That's right -- you don't need to recompile anything in MS Windows itself to get things to work. Instead, you have to use a completely different system -- one that's capable of doing such things, unlike MS Windows.

It's great how you never need to do any work to get things working when you limit yourself to never doing those things.

Overrall, I agree with this post, despite a small problem with the phrase "up to date with technology". There are reasonable requirements to keep you tech skills/toolkit up to date so that they are relevant, but the average Joe ( sixpack ) doesn't need the most current version of an OS to meet their needs. For me, XP is fine, and since I still build my computers, there is no reason to upgrade until XP ceases to meet my needs.

I think MS releases multiple versions of the OS strictly for sales. Its a common technique to set up a price model for different segments of the population in order to maximize market penetration.

e.g. Take the same software base, then disable portions and sell that version for a lower price. I mostly see this done with software, but CPU and video card manufacturers have done the same.


Simplicity is nice, and I do think MS overdid the pricing model technique with Vista.

Whe had 3 machine with Windows 2003 installed. We kept getting this message thay they were illegal when we tried to download installations. Now that we have Winndows Office 2007, my bodd thinks we are legal. But, actuall, it was the operating system that was illegal because it was copied to the 3 diferent machines and would not allow us to download upgrades. Now, we are back networked, but I can't use my floppies with documents used as formats, nor can I email from home where I have Windows xP as my operating system. The computers at the office will not open any of the attachments. I went through a big, big hassle yesterday I was sick and had to retype the divorce decree. It was a mess.So, what I'm seeing is that I can't send emails from my home computer now to my boss of the law clerk because they cannot oppen then. Where there was Outlook, it has been replaced with Outlook Express, and I need all of the information that was in outlook. They say that they made back up copies, but I can't find them if they did, and I can't figure out how to open the backups and set them up for use. What is the solution?

First thing, make sure you have a legal purchased license for each PC.

In other words, you should have 3 copies of Windows XP or Windows Vista with 3 SEPARATE Certificates of Authenticity.

Also, you will need three separate purchased licenses of Office 2003 OR Office 2007. Either one will run on XP OR Vista.

If you do that, everything should work.

Not all oem pc's have the disks
But they must a license each stuck to the case

Firstly, (and lets just ignore the fact that you have unlicensed software since that is a huge issue... in a LAW OFFICE???), why would you want to move from a Server OS to a Desktop OS?
There are numerous issues you could be running into here, but it would require digging into your environment and finding out how / what is configured.

I know, hard to understand this post. My interpretation:

Whe had 3 machines with Office 2003 installed. We kept getting this message that they were illegal when we tried to download updates from Windows Update (think Genuine Advantage). Now that we have Office 2007, my boss thinks we are legal.

But, actually, it was the OS that was illegal because it was copied to 3 diferent machines and would not allow us to download updates.

The rest gets a bit confusing...

The trick of understanding the message is to do a direct translation into another language such as Spanish. You then translate it back into English.

What he really wants to know is where can he find the ".pst" files that contain all his emails in Outlook 2003.

look here on the computer that has your emails:

C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

You can import this file into outlook 2007.

I think he's also missed the point that he might need to save his doc's in )ffice 2007 as Office 97-2003 docs for his recipients to open them!

Is not allways illegal
The main thing is to have a licence for each pc

In answer to your Office 2007 with Vista post tag, Ummmm.. Yeah, that's what the two of them were all about!!! For the last 6 months all there has been is the Vista/2007 hype.

Windows 2003? That's a server OS. Are you running server OSs on desktop machines? Or are you referring to Office 2003, which is an APPLICATION? Windows and Office are two different things, Office CAN'T run without Windows, but Windows is very happy NOT having Office installed.

If the OS is copied to three different machines, YOU ARE running pirated copies of the OS. This is what WGA is all about. If you can't email attachments to your office and have them open, you probably DON'T have the application required to open them, it's as simple as that. The compatibilities have nothing to do with the OS, and LITTLE to do with recent versions of Office, as their documents are (of late) interchangeable between the various versions of Office, with the notable exception of Access.

As far as your boSS not being able to open them, can he not OPEN them, or are they being blocked? BIG difference. If he cannot open them, then the application necessary to open them is not installed on the receiving computer. As far as them being blocked, most Excel files will be blocked by Outlook and Outlook Express, due to the possibility of harmful macros being possible payloads. There are many OTHER types of files that can be blocked as well. .EXE, .XLS, .JPG, .COM... All will be blocked by the security settings.

If they formatted without backing up your files, then your emailbox is gone. You will be searching for a file called "Outlook". If you find it, and you DON'T have Outlook installed, you can't put that information into Outlook Express. You need to install Outlook. Once installed, set it up as you usually would, then copy the OLD Outlook file over the NEW Outlook file. (I actually rename the new one, and copy the old one into the same directory.) Easy.

One last brutal, potentially painful thing... I am amazed you made it... With typing skills and grammar like that, how do you keep a job? Learn how to use a spell check! You post like some of the teenagers at one of the audio electronics forums I frequent, yet you claim a "Legal/Medical Professional" status...

Office 2007 will not open older document files. If you create a document in Office 2007, those with earlier versions will not be able to open them, either. Download OPEN OFFICE from openoffice.org It is free and will open just about anything and the file that you make should open when you e-mail them to other people. If not, have others download Open Office. It should solve your problem. MS didn't bother to let anyone know that they want to make sure that "YOU" have to use their products or you are SCREWED! I hope that this helps. Thanks ED

Microsoft has always supported older document formats. For example you can open a Word or Excel docment created in a previous version of these in Office 2007. The exception to this has always been Access. Many features that are used in Access databases have had to be converted over to the new version. Sometimes that worked, some times it didn't.

The statement that you can't open Office 2007 documents in Office 2003 is not 100% correct either. You can open Word documents created in Word 2007 with 2003, but you can't open Excel 2007 (saved in it's native format xlsx) with Excel 2003. You would have to save it as an Excel 97-2003 version.

you can set the default save format to Office ver. 2003. It has to be done program by program, however.

Click on the ridiculous little circle at the top left of the program window. At the lower right of the dialogue/window that opens, configure the preferences.

For opening files of older versons
Are you say this is not so with Office 2007

will not open older document files? Which? Wordstar 1? If you are sharing files with an older version of Office(any version from 97 up) you should save in the compatible format. If you save in 2007 format, then the user of an earlier version of Office merely needs to download a free filter from MS that workjs invisibly behind the scenes.
eddrone has presumably neither seen nor used Office 2007

How about M$'s flagship development environment (Visual Studio 2005) being INCOMPATIBLE with Vista.
1) The IDE actually recommends you run as Admin everytime you run the darn thing. Yeah, that's good security design for you.
2) Even more importantly, the C compiler offers the worst downward compatibility in windows history. The thing can't doesn't even recognize attributed class from VS 2003.
3) Every new release, the code output gets slower and slower. I compiled the same template objects using VS6 and VS2005. The latter took an average of 4 times as long to execute as the former. Not to mention the productivity hit you have to take with the increased compile time that one can hardly ignore each time you press build. You call that progress? If this is the result of outsourcing, please stop!

In fact, if you look at the official documentation, you have to go back to 1998 (Visual Studio 6) to find an officially compatible compiler.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I spend alot of time in VS, but I thought VS 2003 was not compatible but VS 2005 was.

Neither VS2003 nor VS2005 are compatible out of the box.

You have to install two service packs to VS2005 to be officially supported. But even after that 1 hour upgrade; VS2005 is still the worst visual studio ever produced by microsoft. I am sticking to VS2003 until they fire Steve Em-Balmer and produce a viable alternative.

If you wrote apps for the .Net 1.x framework, be prepared to start having to update your code. The .Net 2.0 framework is ok, but still requires some tweeking to make things hunky dory.

Long story short, MS dropped the ball on Vista for developers.

A-Men!

"...otherwise they just look like the FUD the article was trying to dispel..."

The constant validation and making me approve everything is a major PITA. If I launch a task it shouldn't bother to prompt mr. If it comes as an RPC, It should be not run automatic.

Is it more secure not when people get so annoyed they click the do not ask me again hutton? I be1lieve that the Vista is stunted. However Ubuntu 6.10 runs like a scalded Dog on the new Toshiba Laptop. with 2GB of RAM. In fact in WINE some things I use are much faster than VISTA without the constant prompting, and the basis for security is Linux OS.

The article stated that most of the XP apps were imported onto Vista. In addition, it's possible to show multiple OS's in the Boot feature when starting/restarting your computer. For instance, I run XP Pro SP2, Vista 32-bit and 64-Bit, Office 2007, Groove, Exchange. Now I do run custom computers, but I spend less than $1,000 getting them running and configured, along with the hardware I want. The OS IS backward compatible with nearly every app on XP, but with dual-boot feature, why do this? Also, Office doesn't need to be on the computer, I just have it and use it.

about Vista include George Ou and now Steve S Warren.

Bit telling that.

Since you are using it to install an upgrade, you will not be able to use your own license number even if you ditch Vista.

Take a good look at google and seek for clean install Vista from Upgrade DVD to solve this issue!

And spreading rumors like that is exactly the ignorant behavior this article was written to counter.

Installing an upgrade copy of Vista makes your previous OS license legally invalid. Why? Because the upgrade license for Vista is contingent on a prior version. This is why the upgrade is cheaper.

It does NOT make the XP key technologically invalid. You can still uninstall Vista and reinstall XP, using your previous key, without any problem.

What you can't do, legally, is upgrade a PC to Vista, and then use your XP key to install XP on a different machine. But the key would still work to do it.

Exactly right, and I know because I did install the vista upgrade over XP Pro and ended up removing it and reinstalling XP Pro with the same key. Worked just fine. Don't you just love people who THINK they know what they are talking about, even though they have never verified it?

Your reply is great. I'm runing XP, Vista 32 and 64-bit versions of Ultimate, Office 2007 and Groove, use Exchange Server as well as SQL. I also own an Apple G5 Power PC and wonder how long the Power PC will be supported. Apple won't say and I don't think they will. Microsoft gives fair warning. I'll keep running XP until it's no longer supported then simply delete it, something that's quite easy.

Activation is designed to stop you installing windows xp on another machine
Installing vista on the another machine is more practical

. . . same as a vehicle or clothing. Best thing to do is try it. You will by default sooner or later. Its a very worthy product and much time and effort was spent in its development. I enjoyed my use of RC-1, but do not need the upgrade right now. If you find fault with it, there are alternatives.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513-6157709.html

"PC unit sales soared 173 percent at U.S. retail stores during the week ended February 3, compared with PC sales in the previous week"

"Current Analysis also noted that during Vista's debut week PC unit sales rose 67 percent compared with the same period a year ago."

"demand was higher for PCs with the more expensive version of the new operating system"

"Notebooks loaded with Vista Home Premium accounted for 76 percent of all notebook PC sales, while Vista Home Basic represented only 16 percent"

Vista's target ended up being the home market by default. When they started struggling to make their deadlines they dropped the changes that the business world wanted to see, and kept the ones that would appeal to the home appliance user.
I wouldn't call that in itself a bad decision, attempting to sell the resultant home based product back to businesses when the advantage to that section of the market is minimal, well I suppose they had to try.

that none of the manufacturers or stores are offering XP anymore (that I have seen). There is not the normal 6-months of choice, it is Vista-only.
And of course, people will purchase an upgraded version usually -- more features and less chance for the familiar "you cannot perform that task unless you upgrade" notice.

When you configure a PC on Dell's web site, Windows XP is available. Most retailers will most likely have Vista only.

I just looked and there aer a few models that say XP is a choice. I went back to HP, and nothing except Vista, same with e-machines.

some of the dell models do not offer XP though.

I would still have liked an overlap for choices from all of the vendors.

You are exactly the dumb azz type of consumer that they are trying to market to.

And you are in IT right?

In the Home and Home Office section, I did a search on simply Windows XP and came up with 38 different models with XP to choose from.

Can't say that's Microsoft's problem, I'd say that's HP's problem. And you fell for it hook, line and sinker.

Or, you aren't that stupid and you just look for convenient excuses to make your point.

those are refurbs, and you say you are in IT.

Plus, I was looking at notebooks for a couple of people.
The main site does not allow for configuration with XP, and almost none of the models (refurbs) that do have media center.

In times past, after MS introduced a new OS, the older one(s) were available for a long time still (preloaded and in options). Where are they on the new units? few and hard to find. This is marketing at work, trying to force Vista out.
Also, all of them decided against purchasing because not even the HP support came back to me with an answer yet (HP lost 2 notebook purchases) as to if we can have XP loaded on a new system instead.

No, I am not stupid, thank you very much! and yes, I did look over the site and tried searching for Windows XP and XP in the "home and home office" section.

What exactly did I fall for? Didnt buy anything, started looking around at other vendors because of it. so how did I fall for it and what did I fall for???

Maybe you should pull your head out of your A$$ before commenting on posts. There are quite a few times that you need to get told to READ the posts first that you comment on.

I did just now re-read your two posts right above the sub topic that we are talking about here and I didn't find the word "new" anywhere.

You said, "Didnt I say NEW dumba$$"

Actually, no you didn't. Nice try.

Caught red handed. Apparently, you meant to say "new" but didn't and now you are trying to prove a point that you simply can't unless we are to read your mind instead of your posts.

Check Business (Small-Med or Enterprise), you will find plenty of XP there.

and the people looking wanted a home notebook instead of the business class.

Was XP Media center ever offered on a Laptop? I know it's circulation was fairly limited. I'm not sure why one would want it on a laptop actually, but that is proably just my lack of imagination.

At any rate, they can pick up media center Edition seperately if that is really what they want (ZipZoomFly has it for 110)

Since October of '06 you had a chance to purchase a pc with XP on it and were offered a free upgrade to Vista through a mail in rebate. During the last week or so of January the sales of XP machines went down only because the retail outlets did not replenish XP stock and that was because the manufacturers were not offering it anymore. The first week of Vista sales would have HAD to be better than the last week of XP sales because of this.

It is still primarily XP. Nearly all the systems CDW sells are XP.

YOu won't get the software bundle you get with the consumer line, and it may cost a bit more, but you generally get better hardware. And you can get XP.

With a business product line laptop, you'll typically get the ability to hook up to a real docking station as opposed to these half baked, generic docking stations that they sell for consumer grade laptops at places like Best Buy, Circuit City, etc.

I can't tell you how many times I have people come to me and tell me how much they regret not having the real docking station abilities. Might push your original purchase up $100 because it's "business grade" but it is so worth it later on down the road.

I just purchased a Notebook PC for my son, guess what, it came installed with Vista.
If Microsoft actually thought they had a winner with Vista, they would give you some choice, however; they know that very few people would actually choose Vista over XP Pro.
I actually experienced one user who went to Mac instead of going to Vista. Guess what?? He's as happy as can be with OS X (Tiger). I doubt he will ever go back to Windows.
I don't care about myths, I care about facts and Windows technology is a "jobs program", and the Windows support and admin people know it. Vista is a new revenue stream for Microsoft. Those are the facts.

Regarding Myth #3 (Vista versus W-XP security), you wrote that "The Windows Firewall in Vista allows you to block outgoing traffic as well as incoming." In practice, that's not true. Vista firewall does perform some outbound filtering only for core Windows services and certain outgoing messages, but ALL OTHER outgoing traffic is allowed. Any traffic to be blocked must be user-specified in advance, in great detail (malware name, location, port, etcetera). There's no practical way to create every individual, separate rule needed for each of the endless possibilities. Although Vista does "allow" a user to block one single instance of pre-identified outgoing traffic, Vista's firewalll design makes it impossible for users to block all undesired outgoing traffic in advance. The little blocking that Vista does is virtually useless, and the wholesale blocking that users need isn't possible.

allow all, deny some. They'll get it one day.

Because of all the problems with any MS OS, no matter what the reason, MS has single handedly created tens of thousands of jobs for companies like Symantec, Trend Micro, etc.

Then, they go around talking trash about MS especially Symantec.

Symantec really should just hope and pray that MS never gets their OS as secure as it could be. Their entire future relies on MS's failures.

MS gives a lot of IT people a job through it's black list approach to security. Hooray for Microsoft! May their gross incompetence continue ;-))

Aw, I love 'em really.

MS singlehandedly propelled tech support and third party security companies into a billion dollar industry. Said more plainly, Micrisoft's software is so crappy, there's a whole industry making billions by keeping it remotely functional for the user.

That's not really a flatering argument for Microsoft is it?

I for one would love to see Microsft get it right finally (isn't 30 years enough practice?). I'd love to see Computer Service (how to design and install) versus more Computer Support (how to fix after it breaks) Comapanies.

I know it's a typo, but what a great description of the outfits who put you to sleep playing crappy on hold music for hours before being unable to answer your question! Like about half the morons on this thread who purport to be IT people...

MS Making their OS as secure as it could be
Would be good for their customers
But may be bad for them
If they enter the security market place
Which it looks like they will?

I have a Desktop PC and a new Dual Processor laptop. Is there any reason, because I own and use both computers that I cant load my copy of Vista on both

The Law. You don't 'own' the soft-ware. You have purchased a licence to use someone else's software. (Read the EULA) To do so would be a violation of your aggrrement with Microsoft. To load Vista on more than 1 physical machine, you must either have a 'Volume' licence, or buy another licence. (that comes with some of the soft-ware.) -d

Few, grant it, but there are.

For example, I'm pretty sure with MS Office 2003 and I believe MS Office 2007 you can install it on more than one PC (two total I think) if one is a work PC and one is a home PC.

I know there is fine print involved that honestly I don't recall off of the top of my head like which license type (OEM vs Enterprise vs Home) but none the less, there are exceptions.

They have an option under Software assurance to allow home users access to the software, but that is a little bit different.

Most all of the Office Products do have an allowance for the "Primary user" of a workstation to also install the same license on their laptop computer.

There are several licensing versions in Office, I have a copy that I can use it on 3 systems, but for non-business use only. I was looking at another copy, but it only installed on 1 system, but could be used for business purposes.
So, you need to read the box before purchasing to see what you are getting. Other SW is like this as well, like tax SW. A common thing on tax SW is that 3-5 people can do their taxes on it, only 1 can use the state, and only 1 can use e-file without extra charges.

Deb's article is good. And I agree with it. For the most part. As a gamer, I have done a bit of research. For one thing, MS has seen fit to remove OpenGL support in Vista. Going strictly with DirectX. The new graphics model seems good on paper. However benchmarks show that XPsp2 will run most games (Doom3, Prey, Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 Vegas, UT2k4, etc) at a higher performance rate than Vista (as currently available). For proof of this please go to Tom's Hardware web site. As for it being "bloated", I would agree that the addition of new features cannot really be considered "bloat". The fact that you might not be interested in these new features, and may consider them to be bloat means you should consider your options carefully. There are alternatives after all. Personally, I am going to wait for awhile before installing Vista on my new geek box. But, I will run it on my old geek box once I have migrated all my data and programs over to the new box and am sure they are all working as expected. My new box will be dual core with 2 ATI X1950 GPUs in Crossfire mode. So I know it will be able to make use of all the eye candy in Vista. But, I also know that my 4 year old box (3.2ghz HT, 2gig PC3200 DDR, ATI X1650 AGP (handles 3.0 shader model necessary for new gen games) will be able to run it with all the eye candy as well. My advice is that unless you are buying a new pc with Vista pre-loaded, stay with XP until the new O/S is refined a bit. And that's my 2 cents worth.....g'day.

Did you notice on the answer for Video cards they mentioned PCI but ignored AGP?

They also did not mention why there was no "Classic" version like XP can be made to look like Win2k or 98. I don't like the new interface either in Vista or office. I tried the Office Beta and could not get the hang of it

Not Office 2007, but for Vista there are the following:

Aero Glass, Vista Standard, Vista Basic and Windows Classic.

If you don't like the new ribbon for Office 2007, stay with Office XP or 2003.

* it's confusive, but I'll get used with it sometime...
* it hides important information needed for every day administraiton of your system, with a bloat number of extra dialogs (plus the infamous UAC prompts), right clicks, contextual menus, and complex selection of the requested service. This is really lengthy and you can often forget where was that "damned" option you configured a few months ago and that you want to revert. Usability has been completely forgotten.
* this interface is damn slow, and gets too much resources for itself. Any basic windowing operation or simple text display in a dialog immediately consumes a lot of CPU and memory
* there's NO support for the Windows XP interface that worked so well; the "classic" theme looks only like Windows 2000. In my opinion, the XP interface was much better, even after using Vista for months, I still prefer using another PC running XP, or even an Linux worstation running a XP-like theme in Gnome or KDE.

The interactions with the OS in Vista have been severely restricted so much that you are constantly opening specific dialogs or control panels for everything; and the configuration panel is nearly unusable, despite this should be the most important part of the OS!


Vista support for hardware is extremely limited. It just supports the oldest ones that are marketed since many years, but not the newest that were introduced two years ago. it's like if all driver development was stopped 2 years ago at Microsoft. instead Microsoft developed and extended a new specification and expected that vendors would support it immediately. But given the many issues that were found in the Vista development, none of the interfaces that were documented by Microsoft were working as doucumented; so finally Microsoft decided to release Vista, and ignored all other issues, forcing many manufacturers to stop making great products that work perfectly and securely in past versions of Windows. There's a separate line of products that are made for Vista, and that are MUCH more expensive, less secured, more bogous in their new "certified" drivers, and lots of drivers for Vista, that Microsoft refuses to authorize for delivering media contents (if you look into why Media Center or Media Player refuses to play a CD or DVD, you'll find, after lots of investigation, some tricky log where the Vista API rejects the software request, because some internal dll within a driver is not certified, even if the driver was featured and recommanded by Microsoft for your hardware! This includes most drivers for graphics cards from BOTH nVidia and ATI, depsite these are the only two makers that can, today, successfully run Vista Aero!

In other words, there exists today NO serious offer that fully supports Vista as wanted by Microsoft. The "Made for Vista" logo means absolutely nothing. The reality is that Vista has lots of bugs, unimplemented features, non working APIs, and many undocumented requirements. How do you want that PC makers provide Vista without bugs?

Given the current situation, it will take about 2 years to solve all the compatibility problems. During that time, your costly Vista licence will provide LESS service than XP and your PC will run poorly.

So for now, the best buy is definitely not Vista if you want Windows. Try Vista at your own risks, but get ready to get back to XP for at least 2 years.

All these are wellknown problems; they are enough to justify the fact that MANY public or commercial organizations have PROHIBITED Vista, until further analysis.

And many service providers are also STRONGLY saying to their clients to NOT migrate their system to Vista for now, simply because the cost of migration is high, but also the current cost of maintenance, and lack of alternative solutions with Vista.

The only alternative for these problems is to keep XP, and just evaluate Vista for some future, in order to prepare for it. But take your time for this migration, you have at least 3 years do do that, and probably more! There's also nothing in Vista that is absolutely required for any project; the security issues are even simpler to manage with XP than with Vista for which there exists no alternative solution, and not enough resources available on the market to help you at reasonnable price.

Now, with this 3 years future, just consider what you really need on your desktop PCs. Windows is not a solution for all your problems, just consider that server-hosted applications can do the same service, on open platforms (with or without Windows). Those servers don't necessarily need migration of technologies, they need something else: scalability.

And for now, there even does not exist any Windows server that integrates the Vista security features; Windows 2003 is not different from XP in its security model. And there are many safe alternatives to Windows Server that have proven scalability and security under Linux, Unix, BSD... and that even work perfectly for running applications accessed from Windows clients, or MacOSX clients, or Linux clients...

And here, the best tool for deployment of your applications is not IE, but Mozilla browsers that work identically across all client platforms.

Now let's talk about gaming: seriously, nothing works well in Vista, simply because there are no good support for DirectX 10 in Vista itself, and from the two major graphics chipset makers. In addition, the total absence of OpenGL in Vista prohibits any portable developments of the greatest games across platforms: consoles, Mac, PC. So most games won't work in Vista before long, as it requires a new development model to make OpenGL-based programs compatible with DirectX 10 on Vista; notably it will require the implementation of a complete OpenGL emulator over DirectX 10, or rewriting most costly graphics libraries. Do you remember the nightmare in 1995 with so many incompatibilies in games that previously worked with a DOS extender?

Really Vista lags at least 2-3 years behind the current industry developments. All that time corresponds to the huge time that was lost by not involving the industry into the evolution of Windows, and by Microsoft wanting to do everything alone, on the paper only, without recurrent quality tests; this lead to many many bugs, and years to correct them (that's why Vista came so late, 2-3 years after the initial schedule).

Really, if you still want Windows, there are better solutions from third-parties that can complement Windows XP and secure it more tightly, without the many incompatibilities and poor performance that the current customers of Vista are experiencing with Vista only.

Microsoft currently rejects its fault to users, by sending them to the manufacturer of their PCs, despite there are NO hardware problem and NO software problems, only LACKS of support by Vista, or support that was present in XP but Microsoft failed to port to Vista, or even support that Microsoft REMOVED from Vista (e.g. OpenGL...).

Oh my goodness...since last posting here I have installed Vista Business and I have had a headache since. Wouldn't be so bad except for the Audigy 2 ZS card....and folders from the upgrade that were encrypted EFS by XP are now a pain to access (haven't figured how to access them). Now granted I haven't spent night and day on these issues (except for the audigy card spent 8 hours trying to get it to work) but nevertheless...right now I don't recommend a Vista upgrade...you are better off getting it installed on a new pc. I haven't even touched into the .wmv problems I've been having...codecs etc. GOODBYE Sygate firewall...man what a huge sacrifice I have made. Once I figure out all these cons that I've run into I might talk about some of the pro's.

Been discontinued for what 1 1/2+ years?

When Symantec bought Sygate, they discontinued the firwall as it was competing against Symantec's existing product line.

Anyways, while I would recommend you not using a discontinued product as the updates and patches are no longer available, I will say that Sygate did make a killer home firewall.

I used it myself for several years and even today, I think it is better than its competitors. But again, without updates and patches, it's almost worthless.

Even without updates and patches, Sygate is probably the best around. I like to hack away at supposedly impregnible systems (white hat, honest) and still find Sygate poses the stiffest challenge. I've switched away from it, looking for alternatives, but so far I've always gone back. When I compare it the firewall offerings in NIS and SCS it wins hands down. I'm holding off with Vista for a while anyway - I haven't found Vista's security features to be any big benefit over a properly secured XP system, and I'd miss those few great progs like Sygate, for one.

Upon reviewing a laptop running Vista Basic it's clear to me that microsoft has continued the trend of a larger memory footprint to run the operating system. My xp pro uses about 300 meg of memory with no optional applications running. The laptop I reviewed used 460 meg under the same condition.

Obviously a laptop with 512 meg of memory will be in limp mode most of the time.

If you must have Vista (which I don't), plan on 1 meg ram minimum.

Although, XP Pro needs more than 512MB of RAM to perform well, if you want to run big apps on it. I find that 1GB is more than enough. I have only 512MB at work and I'm severly hamstrung. I have to run Eclipse, Tomcat, MySQL, MS Office and Lotus Notes all at the same time. It's a disaster. My colleague seems to get on well enough with 768MB, but 1GB should be the minimum for us heavier users.
Even at home, where I run XP Home on a laptop with 1GB RAM, I'm currently using 400MB just to run Firefox, FlashGet (big download), my AV and my Firewall (not Windows Firewall!).
512MB wouldn't leave me with much left over.

When I was testing RC2 I noticed its heavy footprint. The idea of stating 512MB as a minumum is ludicrous. Even 1GB could easily be swallowed up if you ran say Photoshop in addition to an AV app and firewall and a browser.

MS says 512MB to be "Vista-ready" and 1GB to be "Vista-capable". It should surely be 1GB
and 2GB respectively.

This is from the XP CD

Before you install Windows XP Professional, make sure your computer
meets the following minimum hardware requirements:

* 233 megahertz (MHz) Pentium or higher microprocessor (or
equivalent)
* 128 megabytes (MB) recommended (64 MB of RAM minimum;
4 gigabytes (GB) of RAM maximum)
* 1.5 GB of free space on your hard disk
* VGA monitor
* Keyboard
* Mouse or compatible pointing device
* CD-ROM or DVD drive

Funny ?

That's not a digg, just something that made me smile. Far as I can tell:

win98: 128 meg is pleanty, 512 is a ton

winXP: 512 is confortable for normal work, 1 gig prefered

Vista: 1gig minimum, 2 to 4 gig if you can afford it

I'm pushing for 4 gig on my next rig but I'm also running multiple VM to play with clustering and ldap right now though.

If you are making plans, plan on steady increases in the amount of real memory you will need. It would be the end of Moore's law if any other path made sense. Get used to it.

To me, with my historical perspective, I think it is trivial to debate the merits of whether or not each new fundamental generation of operating system should use larger memories.

It may be hard to accept but it is actually quite stupid to fail to seize opportunities to apply the fruits of Moore's law.

The "IT guy" betrays the classic flaw in IT Guy logic. He believes his role is to control the advance of technology. Actually his job is to support it. It sounds to me like he has a lot of work to do and probably should be doing it rather than venting about how hard it is for him to do his job. Apparently without much of a plan.

ask for a recommendation on what they should buy
I don?t like lying
Also The questions about what you use at home

Speaking as someone who is not an IT person (although sometimes I support THEM), I recognize that since most users are not terribly knowledgeable about configuring and using PCs, they often need to be limited in some respects. IT has to look at the larger picture, not just an individual user's needs.

I remember when I had a more active role in tech support (a sideline, completely different from my main work), the MIS head gave everyone a third-party screensaver program for Win95 (I forget the name, but it was very popular at the time). He did it because someone had gotten it and other people complained that they hadn't. He was new in the job and I guess he was trying to be diplomatic. He'd already ticked off a few people.

But the program was a resource hog, especially on an OS that had, what, 32 KB user and 32 kB GDI if memory serves? First thing I did working on a machine was to disable it. Granted this is an extreme example. Work PCs are there to do work, not entertain. But the principle is the same.

I agree that IT often forgets that their job is to make it easier for people to get work done and if that means adopting new tech, then that's what they need to do. But there are a myriad of issues to consider. Evaluation time and effort, support resources, available capital, security (this should really go first), network resources, individual system capabilities, cost/benefit ratios and more. Then of course, there's the big non-IT boss who wants it and doesn't care about any arguments to the contrary.

So rather than being mutually exclusive, support and control need to go hand-in-hand, because they're both elements of the technology picture.

Thank you, Deb. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Dell's Vista people suggested I wait for the first patch. And then you told me about the Compatibility tab in Properties.

Glenn F. Rodgers

You would imagine if Vista's wonderful new security is so good, it would at least let you know if it was blocking an application, but VNC installes, the service starts, but can you connect - no!

Remote Support requires too much user intervention, Remote Desktop Connection gives you an interface the user can't see.

Any ideas?

nmap the box to see what ports are listening for connections then see if one is the VNC port (I forget what it connects on specifically).

If the port is not visible, see if the firewall is blocking it and ad the rule to allow the port.

You can also run vnc manually and see if it returns an error about blocked networking. I believe the service runs silent but it should allow a manual run from the start menu icons.

yes, tried 2 different type of VNC- RealVNC, Ultra VNC and Tigh VNC. All have the same problem can't init a connection but work ok if the server add the remote client. When it doesn't work come back with error like password not set which is not true.

I hope someone can find a solution for it.

To provide support for the 40-bit encryption levels and for the 56-bit encryption levels on a client computer that is running Windows Vista, you must configure the AllowPPTPWeakCrypto registry entry.

I think that could be your problem. It also fixes the problems using PPtP VPN in vista.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929857

My problem with Myth #1 is that it assumes a PC with hardware to refute Myth #1. Some people have them; some people don't. So far, in my experience with Vista and home PCs, most people don't. Vista is bringing me lots of work adding RAM and upgrading/replacing graphics cards, sound cards, drive controller cards, port cards, etc.

As to $600 computers, the "devil" - as always - is in the specs and the warranty and the current consumer ratings of the company. After that, I'm seeing the same pattern of customer service and tech support trouble that followed W95, NT, and ME.

Software problems? I could write another post about those, but it'd be a small book.

My problem with Myth #7 overlaps my comments re: #1 - I'm replacing lots of cards because they're hardware-incompatible with Vista and/or there are no Vista drivers available.

So far, based on my experiencs, there's only one safe, practical approach to Vista for my average client (i.e., the average home PC owner), and that's a name brand PC, from the right company, with the right specs, and warranty. Then forget all your old stuff, unless you KNOW FOR A FACT that it's compatible.

Vista problems have been bring me business since a week and a half after its release. I've had over 100 calls from over 30 clients in the past 6 days.

"Nuff' said.

Good luck.

I've read so many conflicting views on Vista and I've come to the conclusion that it's really a crap-shoot at this point. Reviewers that have success tend to have a pretty standard hardware profile that isn't neccessarily what we "unwashed masses" have. I think that this contributes to a lot of the disagreements over the stability and usability of Vista.

I have a system that's relatively current (AMD 4400 X2, 4GB memory, 8800GTS video card, 2x300GB SATA2 RAID, 2x150GB IDE)

-Vista stutters on the multi-core (yes, I've been through all of the forums on the topic and tried hot fixes and drivers galore. It was stutter-free under XP64 and Linux out of the box)
-The NVIDIA video drivers are unstable with any DirectX games (OpenGL seems better, but still not perfect)
-I had to replace my Creative Labs Audigy card because Vista wouldn't support it.
-I had to drop my memory timing (CL) from 2.5 to 3.0 or Vista refused to stay up (though it's rock solid under XP 64 and Linux at 2.5)
-Even with all of this, I get a crash or lockup every few hours.
-Application compatibility has been good. There have been a few apps that I've had to run in compatibility mode. But otherwise, no real issues.
-Installing Vista created a nightmare for my multiboot Redhat/Ubuntu/XP/Windows Server environment. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been using bootloaders on the Non-RAID with the actual boot partitions in RAID. But that's what I need for redundancy in my environment.

Now....when I loaded Vista on an Intel Core 2 box with a motherboard with built-in audio & video and no funny RAID multi-boots, it was flawless. (though with about a 20% performance hit compared to XP....but slick and stable). It's exactly the same Vista product....but a completely different experience.

Personally, my assessment at this point is that Vista as a pre-install is a wonderful thing. As an OS for a homebuilt system, gamer, power user or even as an upgrade in a corporate environment, I would be VERY wary. You may get lucky. You may just as likely hit some driver or compatibility issues that cripple your machines. Test well and have a fall-back.

I'm recommending to clients that they wait for SP1 before considering an upgrade. For new equipment, by all means order it with Vista. Then it's the vendor's nightmare if something doesn't work.

The reality is that if you need to use Windows, you're going to end up on Vista. I'm sticking with XP64 for now and I'll continue to boot up Vista and apply patches until all of the monkeys have been shaken out of the tree.

Resistance is Futile. But it does buy some time to work the bugs out.

Microsoft has made a monumental mistake by not supporting IT admin tools (adminpack, exchange management console (exchange AD field addition), etc.). There are tricks out there, some of ?em (sort of) work and some don?t, but they?re not backed by Microsoft. This is not the way to do (Vista) business.

It sounds like Microsoft is trying to convince his best friends (us, the IT people) not only to not recommend Vista but to recommend against it! Or should we be glad that with all the problems Vista has, our job security is guaranteed?

I have serious troubles automatically connecting to saved wireless networks that are hidden.

And the claim that you can make old apps work in compatibility mode is total BS. I can give you a long list of apps that don?t , and it so happens that I need all of ?em in my daily work.

I am requesting a refund for my Vista purchase today. It is not about the money. It is a protest!

It happens to be that she doen't have root access, but she is perfectly happy in Ubuntu. and she thought it was more than twice as fast as WinXP.

If you make them keep a Windows presence the Machine gets completely obsolete much more quickly.

I am much more comfortable using ssh from VA to support her in OHIO...

I was wondering about your mother...really I was.

Now, back to reality, try running Adobe CS3 tools, logitech quickcam, and other apps people use every day on Linux. See you in 100 years.

I have been using the Vista RC1 version for some time now and I'm not impressed.

1. It takes the OS several minutes to find my home network after the desktop is shown. My XP PC can't see the Vista PC at all no matter what I do. Thanks security!

2. Windows Explorer is confusing and harder to setup and use than the XP version. Indexing, like in XP just slows the system down.

3. Internet Explorer keeps crashing all the time on me.

4. Windows Media Player 11 is crap compared to version 10. Can't get rid of Album Art so screen is full of default images I don't need to see. With version 10 I get 25 to 30 lines per screen of titles. Only get 5 with version 11. Dumb!

It is a good article, almost too good to be true unless one has the author's PC configuration which seems to have overcome initial teething troubles of Vista.

This would not be a problem if you had a brand new PC baby with Vista as it's OS.

Here is a link to J. Nicholas Hoover's article in Information Week magazine, which I think one should be aware of.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197700777

Hope that helps.

Cheers.

Most of ot in the article is true..1 thing i would like to point out is the compatibility. Many are facing issues with sound, graphic driver issues after upgrading to Vista. It will take time to settle down i guess. So waiting for the right time..till then ill just sit and watch...

The price of windows vista and windows xp
Must be compared at the lowest price available
That would be the oem versions
Windows vista lowest prices I can find here in NZ
Show Vista costs $7.24 more then xp
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic OEM
Microsoft Windows XP Home OEM
It?s not much but its there

of running Mandriva, XP Pro and Vista business on my laptop (yes, even a triple boot is possible!) At first, I found myself signing onto XP most often, jsut because of the familiar look and feel. Then, I decided it was time to bite the bullet and use Vista only if possible. First things first... I have been a Linux supporter since Redhat 5.1 days. I love my Mandriva install, especially since I was able to get my wireless working. And I spend quite a bit of time logged into Mandriva for learning purposes. That said... I know I'll get blasted for this... But I like Vista. It's really not that bad. Of the three operating systems on my laptop... it boots the quickest, has me online the fastest, and has an intuitive, easy to learn interface. So... fire away, I'm ready for the assault, but on my laptop it's Vista, Mandriva and XP last in order of preference!

Someone in our IT dept went to a lot of trouble to make sure I did though.

Getting a new box in the sales, and it will be Vista.

Thinking about FreeBSD on the other drive though.

with the Aero Glass ui features?

gods, I've beed turning KDE's version of that off for two years whenever I install a new version of Mandriva Linux.
I can't stand that look.

Myth #7, there was a link to an Article online in the discussions a while back "Windows Vista, REAL COSTS"
This article was most likely a big contributor to this. I actually read the entire article, and contacted the author.
His Email starts with:
Boilerplate disclaimer: The reaction to what started as an obscure technical post to a security mailing list has been rather unexpected and overwhelming, so I'm totally buried in mail at the moment. Please be patient when expecting replies.

Then He tells me:

from reviews I've seen it's been slowly getting better in successive betas. OTOH the comments I got from developers before all this became public (I haven't heard from anyone since then, sigh) was that the need to comply with Vista's content-protection
requirements was diverting significant resources away from just getting
the drivers cleaned up and shipped. As the ATI product manager said in his presentation (over and over and over again), "costs will be passed on to consumers"...

His Security email list posting was apparently written in the very early stages of ALPHA testing

ahh here it is:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
The article most likely to have seriously fed Myth 7.

And OEM at a fraction of the cost!

...and OEM with 0% of the support!

Yes, OEM will save you big bucks, but there are two MAJOR downsides:

1. OEM licenses are NOT transferable to a new PC. In other words, you buy an OEM Vista Ultimate for your new (or current) PC. You install it. Two years later, you build yourself a new PC (or do a mobo/CPU upgrade, same thing) and attempt to install your Vista on your new machine. You're now out of license and illegal. Even if you do manage to install it, it probably won't activate, and even if you do activate it, you're still not legal.

2. OEM software has no included support from Microsoft. If you buy an OEM copy for Grandma and stick it on her new PC, get ready to be the only source of support for it. Or, pay MS per call. OEM licenses require that the PC manufacturer support the OS. On the other hand, if you buy a retail copy (full or upgrade), you get full support from MS.

I'm not saying don't buy OEM, just make sure you're aware of the downsides.

That was changed in January of this year. You will just have to re-activate. YAY!

Yes, the support by MS is not included in OEM; But did you ever try the MS support?
* its subscription is extremely costly
* it is limited
* it is completely impersonal: nothing will be done to consider your particular environment, they simply ignore everything that is not Windows itself, including your PC and even if you PC uses only hardware with certified drivers, and only Microsoft applications
* the solutions it proposes are really basic, nothing that you can find easily by yourself using Google for searching user forums
* this support will never reveal some information that is made available only to some MSDN subscribers with secret agreements
* most of these information are available on the web
* the support service is international, this is basically a call center, with people that are payed with pennies, and without proper training to solve complex problems. In other words, all that they propose are documents freely available on the Microsoft web sites; this support is supposed to be a help for users in order to discover the information in the large Microsoft website
* you can find better information (mean, more precise) by yourself, rather than using the servies of the people you call and that basically uses the same tools as you can, but that will not investigate enough.
* all the replies that are proposed by the call centers have already been found by yourself; they did not solve any problem
* you have to call multiple times for complex problems (your call time is extremely limited), and you can easily exhaust your support rights. Microsoft wants you to pay for getting extra time.

My experience with the MS support is:
* lots of money given to get it
* zero problem solved with it!

Really, there are much better third-party support services than Microsoft, if you need one.

So buy OEM, and choose the support elsewhere! For a large organization, all other computer servies will provide you better support with trained people that can even come to your place, or with independant training for your administrator; if you are a single user at home, you'll get MUCH better assistance by looking for it over online forums.

Yes you can activate automatically the Vista licence only once; But you can transfer your licence to another PC. I experienced it with a PC whose motherboard died two weeks after installing and activating Vista. I could change the motherboard, and Vista needed some updates for some drivers, but it insisted to get a new activation with a licence (only the existing harddisk was kept with its files, I had to change many parts in fact, which is a situation near from a second PC, except that one was no longer usable). The reactivation could be performed easily by phone (even though it was not possible through Internet).

Good story... Digged and Blogged..

http://hardline.wordpress.com/2007/02/06/dont-be-misled-by-these-10-windows-vista-myths/

I work for a large IT company. I've been testing VISTA (official release) and I can confirm 8 out of those ten myths mentioned are totally true or partially true. They are not myths. You should do your practical research before giving bad advice to readers.

I need to be objective as our customers will came back to us when we give bad advise or worse cannot deliver on what I promised. Who comes back to you?

People, only run vista as a test partition, once you have all the software Apps and hardware running correctly and meets your requirements, then and only then use it as your main system. Drivers and software have posed a big stumbling block in some cases only, to the point of no options left but to go around or replace the obstical. So please test

FYI: The DRM and that XP is more secure are the only two correct statements in this poorly researched artical.

You indicate that 8 of the 10 are not myths. Can you provide any more details to counter the article? Just saying that they are not myths will not get you any credit. I use Home Premium at home and have had very little problems. I dual-boot Windows XP with no problems either.

Before accusing the author of not doing their research, please provide what research and your proof.

My background first...

B.S. in Computer Science

Many friends are in the Geek Squad which is one of the very few companies that Microsoft had direct contact and dialog with about the OS before it launched.

Worked with Vista myself

With all of this, neither I or any of the Geek Squad members have had any problems with Vista. In fact the Agents in the Geek Squad said that the only problem with Vista is that it's time consuming to find updates for certain software and/or hardware that they need to install, but once they've found it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with Vista.

In fact, I don't even think they've come to a point where they haven't been able to get something to work on Vista. They've been able to get everything to work.

The only issue that i've run across fairly consistently is that sound adapters for notebooks seem to be fairly spotty in driver support from the manufacturers.

Every machine i've tried to install Vista on has run pretty well, with the exception of notebooks, where I usually have to do some driver-fu and in a couple cases install the XP driver for the adapter.

Other than that, though, no worries. I'm happily using Vista, and my Photoshop 7.0, Corel 12, and all my other applications work just fine. Now, some of them have to run in compatibility mode, but other than that, no problems.

Like I said on another post, it's hilarious to see people who bitched constantly about FUD coming FROM Microsoft re: Linux, Mac, etc. now being the worst FUDders about Vista. Not to mention, usually the least informed.

Please, if anyone is listening.

I'm stuck in the computer and I can't get out. I was never good with these things. I don't know where I am but please help me. This place is starting to get hot and I think I'm running out of air.

Someone is looking for his dog. = Someone's looking for his dog.

Obviously, we shouldn't listen to you either...





And, furthermore...

Someone's intelligent
artical = article.
Why should we listen to you? So, what if you're an IT guy? That's no indication of intelligence. It shows you can read someone's stuff from a book or website. Congratulations.

and blatant misspelling aren't the same thing.
Not that I'm sticking up for either one of them.

I just thought that if he was going to be a putz and correct the other guy's grammar like that, he should not have MORE grammatical errors in his own post!!

Consider mine a "defensive" grammar correction, and therefore not real putz behavior! Only offensive grammar corrections are putz behavior!

Oh, I agree with you whole heartedly. I was alluding to the silliness of both of them.
The term putz made me laugh for some reason. It's not like I've never heard it before.

You are correct, my apologies. I am unintelligent.Not for my opinion, but for posting. I have a rule to not post as people don't read the comments and reply unintelligent nonsense.

I simply stated that you need to test VISTA for what you are going to use it for and that the programs and drivers are all working with no bugs.

VISTA has a nice feel to it and I believe that it will surpass XP eventually. As for this point in time just be careful. People giving it glowing reports with sugar coated comments are not being candid about the faults.

If you don't want to consider my experience...Don't read this.

To AristonITGuy who asked me to be more specific? As I said before some of them are not totally myths I'm not going to go through each and everyone but i.e. Myth #7: Most old applications and peripherals won't work with Vista:: Well a simple Nortel VPN just dosen't work nor does IZarc, iTunes including 3 different types of DVD Burning software; Most Macromedia Multimedia educational Software have bugs working under vista. This list can go on forever as we have an MSI library of over 300 Apps to test. So far it's about 50/50 of what work,works with bugs or don't work at all.

If you don't want to test vista under a dual boot or simply just test it stand along, I don't mind or care. I was simply trying to give some useful advise.

I have to agree with Ibucci,
Firstly, all that was said was to make sure you test prior to putting anything into production.
Secondly, he is correct... the original article is written poorly. I will admit that there is not a single bold faced lie in the article, but there are many exclusions thru the entire story. (OH and if your tempted to try and trash me or my telling of what I tell you as fact, please be aware that I actually do independent testing for Microsoft itself)I will not go into great detail with all that is good / bad about Vista, lets just say that just like any other OS release that Microsoft has ever put out... it has issues, that still need to be resolved, and will continue to pop up with more issues as days go by. SP1 people, just hold out for SP1.
OH.. one last thing... and this one really got me going from the original post, the poster claimed that she had installed Vista on an older piece of hardware running 1 GB of RAM, it runs. OK... your right, it will "RUN" now, will it run smoothly? No, but it will RUN.. she is correct (but would you be happy running it under those conditions?). What I am trying to say, is take everything with a grain of salt, there are inevitable issues that need to be worked out, not even with as much forefront testing that Microsoft does, can they possibly anticipate EVERY possible scenario that you could come up with in your business and or home environment.

about Myth #7, but you made a bold statement by saying she only got 2 myths correct. If you want people to take you seriously, then back up your arguments, don't just make blanket statements.

Okay, genius, confirm away! I want to see an item by item refutation of the 8 myths you say are true.

I especially want to see you prove that Vista is more expensive than XP version to version. Oh yeah, Ultimate doesn't count as it's a new product with no real equivalent in XP.

As far as usability and compatibility goes, i've had few problems with my day-to-day apps. I'm currently typing this on Vista with complete functionality and i'm using all my regular apps.

Now, I know you say you're an IT guy, so of course you're completely aware that applications for business (especially if they're custom coded or from an ISV) can be much more resistant to upgrading, right? Hell, as an IT guy, if you didn't lag 6-12 months behind on new tech you wouldn't be doing your job. So I won't fault you the upgrade paranoia for the business.

But, for home users, Vista is a good upgrade. The only caveat that I give to people who ask is: Run the upgrade advisor. If it has major conflicts, stick with XP for a while until MS irons them out.

The only major problem i've had with vista is with notebooks, as some manufacturers are being very slow with drivers.

But with a desktop PC, if you meet the minimum or recommended specs, you should consider it.

Bottom line: Your blanket "8 of those myths are true!" statement reeks of troll and I await your reply proving otherwise.

Vista Ultimate is the ONLY equlivalent to XP-Pro.!. The rest fall far short to be of any practical use to any business, or serious computer specialist. And there I see a 40? to 60? price increase, and that at the OEM version. (With the consumer box try aprox 200? price increase.) For a drop in performance, and lack of useabilty, and NO support. No Thanks. There is NO business model or justification for Vista. -d

... is Vista Business not equivalent to XP Pro?

Well, "Drive encryption and system backup are only available in Ultimate" from:mr_cazorp@... , has already been covered. But obviously that was too much for you to follow. I can add that the ability to run virtual machines is only available on 'Ulitmate'. I guess that would be over your head also. (I can only judge from your posts- and in them, you DO sound like an immature troll) Also the 'Business' version does not have the 'Child safety cap' that many businesses use (some require) to prevent atacks (caused by careless workers). Other wise the 'Business' version does come close. But 'Close' is not good enough to satisfy regulartary requirements. These capabilities are already in use, why give them up to go with the latest 'Eye Candy' (that nobody over 14 wants) at a factor 0.0 ROI?

ummmm...i'm currently running virtual machines MS Virtual PC 2007 (and others in my company are running VMWare server) on Vista Business...

it's not one of the options listed... hummm.

Actually, Business and Ultimate both will run on virtual machines. I'm also not aware of any VM software that won't run on Vista Business.

So, i'm not exactly sure what you're saying pertaining to virtual machines won't work?

As far as "parental control" goes, since i'm assuming that's what you're talking about as the "child safety cap," there are other ways for that functionality to be enabled like group policy, User Account Control, rights management, and a little thing called a proxy server.

The parental control is geared to consumers, as best as I can tell, because that functionality is very capably covered already by many other products.

Hell, any other time MS adds a capability to the OS, everyone raises a holy terror.

Fine, you want to call me an immature troll, that's your opinion.

But as of yet, i've seen many trollish statements with little to no proof or fact behind them, and usually worded in a way that sounds childish and trollish. In my mind, such things deserve an equal response.

You want to call me a troll? No biggie, i've been called worse. All I ask is that you and the rest of the griefers on here actually source your statements and back them up with more than your fatty tissue on your posteriors.

I've been able to use Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 to run a virtual machine with no problem. It has enabled me to keep my XP configuration around long enough so that anything that does NOT work (and so far my only problem has been with the Cisco VPN client) can still be accessible without having to dual-boot.

The only down-side of the Virtual Machine setup that I've found is that USB devices are not accessible from the Virtual Machine, but I've heard that VMWare solves that problem.

Running a VM of XP within Vista is a great way to transition to Vista and have a safety-net "just in case".

I wouldn't personally depend on System Backup from MS anyway, I love Acronis. Not having tested the Child Safety feature, since all I have is Business, I can't say that it's effective, but I imagine that any business that needs to control user's access won't rely on a home-oriented solution, but rather a business-grade product.

So far I've found Vista Business to be comparable to XP Pro, but I'm the first to admit I've only had it for little over a week. We'll all benefit from everyone's input.

I think perhaps you misundertood the marketing propoganda. YOu can run virtualizaiton in Home and business Editions, sam as XP. Ultimate has an additional feature in that it has a built-in virtulization license (ie buy ultiamte, get a limited Virtual PC license free). As such that is NOT a comparison to XP.

same thing going on with encryption
Vista Backup is available in all editions, same as XP.

Likewise EFS is available in the Business edition (XPPro equivalent).

So these are both in fact straight across comparisons.

Again, a misreading of the propoganda perhaps? BitLocker is a New Technology, which has no XP Equivalent. I am assuming a similar misinterpretation of the built-in disk imaging technology is the cause of the misunderstanding regardign backups

Vista Ultimate was basically the equal to XP Media Center, am I wrong?

Vista Home Premium == XP Media Center.
Vista Business == XP Professional
Vista Basic == XP Home

Vista Ultimate == XP Pro + XP Media Center combined.

MCE was built from Pro and even said Professional when you checked the edition, however MCE couldn't do domains. That's pretty much the same difference between Home Premium and Ultimate.

Business = Pro

Pro didn't have Media Center and Ultimate does, so why would you compare Ultimate to Pro?

While 'Ultimate' does have what the media center versions have, it is supposed to be able to do a whole lot more. (that the MCE simply don't)

That's why it costs more.

learn to spell

I disagree with the Hardware being compatible with Vista myth. While I wouldn't say that most hardware is not compatible, there are definitely some pieces of hardware that are not compatible.

Case in point, a NVidia TV Tuner (NVTV) that I purchased in 2006. According to Nvidia, there will be no Vista drivers released for this card, thus it is not compatible with Vista. Why is it that such a new piece of hardware is suddenly rendered useless because of Vista??

Sounds more like Nvidia is to blame. For them to not support their product with the newest Windows OS seems a little counter-productive. You HAVE to keep the customer happy, bottom line! I looked at Nvidia's webpage and seemed to only find one TV tuner and it was supported by Vista. The one you have may not be supported, but it could be that they would rather you buy their new one. A lot of hardware companies will do that when a new OS comes out. I would e-mail them and maybe even see if other owners of that TV tuner would e-mail Nvidia and possibly convince them to release an updated driver. Hope you get your issue resolved!!

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/nvidia/pissed-off-gamers-ready-to-sue-nvidia-over-crap-vista-drivers-234718.php

According to what I have read so far about the Vista. Microsoft will not allow anything that can capture or stream video to run on Vista. In other words no tv tuner/capture cards or making your own personal DVR.

You can always think Microsoft and the Movie/Music industry for there nice kind way of calling everyone a thief.

Google it, there are tons of cards and drivers that work with Vista to do just this.

More FUD!

do they sell Vista machines with built in TV Tuner cards????

After making this statement:
'According to Nvidia, there will be no Vista drivers released for this card, thus it is not compatible with Vista.'

Why this statement would then be false:
'Why is it that such a new piece of hardware is suddenly rendered useless because of Vista??'

You said, "Why is it that such a new piece of hardware is suddenly rendered useless because of Vista?"

Easy answer. Nvidia isn't making a driver for it. Now wasn't that simple?

You should re-phrase your statement to read, "Why is it that such a new piece of hardware is suddenly rendered useless because of Nvidia?"

Let's face it, everyone accuses MS of making too much $ off of their customers. Maybe, just maybe, that same argument could be used against Nvidia. That thought ever cross your mind?

Nvidia could easily make a driver for that card for Vista. Have you asked them to specify a reason? I have a feeling the reason is simple and management related.

They did a cost/benefit analysis and just said essentially screw it. The cost of rewriting the new driver for Vista isn't worth the rewards of good customer service, etc that they would get.

It's easier to "force" an owner of that video card to just buy a new one and it puts even more money in Nvidia's pocket. And they know everyone will since even decent video cards are relatively inexpensive nowadays.

And we know that however pissed off those customers get, Nvidia makes some of the best cards and those customers will come back to the well one day.

Simple answer wasn't it?

I'm on your side...I was just pointing out to him that his MS bashing statement contradicted itself, but I wanted him to have to think about it.;)

.
I'll bet that the 2006 NVIDIA TV card cannot support the new hardware-based video DRM requirements that Vista requires. In order to play DRM-controlled video, which is CENTRAL to the new Media Center in Vista, a video card must support ENCRYPTED video coming across the PCI bus. Therefore, there is no point in NVIDIA trying to write a driver for it because it simply cannot be done.

Therefore, it is STILL Microsoft's fault!!

I seriously doubt that a 2006 video card is being deserted by NVIDIA without a reason like this. But, this is only a wild guess.

It's easy to blame Microsoft, because it's probably justified, isn't it?

It's just like "Plays For Sure" digital music. But, oops! Zune does not support "Plays For Sure" music. Sorry...You're just "Screwed For Sure".

And this is basically the gist of what I posted. That Vista is not quite ready for prime time unless you are running a very rudimentary system. Driver support is just not there yet. Is this MS' fault? It is arguable because vendors have had plenty of time to ready drivers for their products for Vista release. But, has MS cooperated as fully as it could have? Could all parties been a bit more proactive about having drivers ready? As I stated; I will wait awhile before upgrading, or will put it on a test box that I don't rely on for everyday stuff. Like gaming.

I think there is a lot of playing politics here.

MS probably doesn't cooperate as much as they could but then again, why should they. Company after company after company snubs their nose at them time and time again. Take Symantec and access to the kernel as an example.

And the manufacturers of parts probably don't cooperate as much as they could either.

There is so much to gain financially here.

This is like watching two 5 year olds arguing. Or maybe more appropriate, like two politicians running for office. Can't get a straight answer out of either one, both sides play fast and loose with the facts, and at the end of the day both sides are just as guilty and sleazy as the other.

I don't know what the answer is. But too many people on here hate MS so much that they automatically assume or blame MS for virtually everything. Life isn't that simple.

.
"...It is arguable because vendors have had plenty of time to ready drivers for their products for Vista release..."

Even though Vista was being developed by MICROSOFT since 2001, the design has been changed A WHOLE LOT over this period. For example, if your product required WinFS, you're screwed! That huge feature was completely removed in August 2004. I first saw the "object file system" (now called WinFS) back in the mid-1990s! That thing has been around for over a decade and has never been released.

IHVs and ISVs have not really had all that time to develop things. And, unlike Microsoft, they cannot AFFORD to develop continuously for six years without releasing and SELLING anything.

Furthermore, if Microsoft wants an IHV to develop and test hardware and software for a major operating system upgrade like Vista, Microsoft needs to provide a stable functionally complete system for a sufficient period of time. That was not done until the RC1 release in September 2006!! Prior to that, Vista beta releases were quite INCOMPLETE and BUGGY. That is not enough time.

So, I don't blame IHVs and ISVs for not being ready. I blame Microsoft 100% for the entire problem. Microsoft blew it in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and in 2006. Then, they rushed out a deeply feature cut "Vista" at the very end of the year with this outrageously stupid "release in November and again in January" baloney. How many business customers do you think really took advantage of that November release? Why did Microsoft do it? I think it was all about public relations...customers and investors losing patience.

What absurd nonsense. It is no surprise that Vista is where it is today.

Microsoft:

- Does not meet their own deadlines (or even come close).

- Does not meet their own feature sets.

- Encourages "partners" to develop stuff for the platform. If they fail, no problem. But, if they succeed, Microsoft then builds a product of their own that directly competes with them, and tries to run them out of their own business. Example: Adobe PDF is now in direct competition with XPS. PDF is a great application. It was not necessary for Microsoft to directly compete with it.

- Is not a company that ANYBODY should EVER partner with on ANYTHING.

Oh my god! Are you kidding me?

Adobe PDF, that's what you call it and I'm assuming you mean the whole line from Reader to Writer to the file format itself, is pathetic.

Slow, resource consuming, etc. And you can't just blame MS for trying to compete against the PDF line.

Their are tons of 3rd parties out there that do that and do it well as well as open source.

Give me a break. Defending Adobe's PDF line is like defending Symantec. What planet do you live on?

Adobe has gotten just as fat, lazy and stupid when it comes to the PDF line as MS has supposedly with their OS's.

.
Adobe's PDF product line (Acrobat and Reader) is a fine product. I don't agree with your assertion. But, even if you're right, the point was about Microsoft being a bad partner. Your "red herring" counter-argument is an irrelevant diversion from the point. Talking about software bloat diverts from my point about partnering that, I'm guessing, you really cannot defend.

The "red herring argument" is a dishonest debate tactic that people use when they cannot successfully argue against the real topic. Like the "Jedi Mind Trick", it only works on the weak minded.

You lose, Jedi Youngling Padewan learner. Try again?

is when they come to stab you in the back, they often miss.
Don't rely on them screwing up every time though. Shoot them first, wear armour and don't sit with your back to a door.

Very simple who ever makes the change?
If it was produced before vista
And worked on XP
Vista is an upgrade of XP
Therefore MS is at fault
Simple logic

The truth is, that NVIDIA fell asleep at the wheel. There are now drivers for all of there cards sold in the last 5 years. Goto their website and see for yourself.

If you aren't getting all the features on your existing hardware, then it was a waste of money to get the new version of windows.

While I agree the new UI features aren't needed for business use, if you spent the money for the os, you should be able to use all the features ON EXISTING hardware, or else you have been ripped off or need to replace the hardware.
This means that you need more ram and better viseo card, just for the UI features to work right. not a good thing for MS to do to customers.

I just downloaded a trial version of server 2003 for testing linux desktp authentication on AD server, and on hardware that has far more software running on it in linux, server 2003 with nothing but the os, no roles added, is slower than molasses in january, yet linux, with multiple servers running, multiple services running, is screaming fast on the hardware. If Vista is even close to server 2k3 in performance, no-one will be happy without replacing the hardware completely.
[ dual core AM2 3800+ 64 bit system is fast with linux, slow with server 2k3 ]

You are getting all the features that your current hardware supports... And all the features are available ON EXISTING (just because you dont have it, doesn't mean it hasn't been invented) hardware as well. You are making an OS that's supposed to last for 5 years AT LEAST, so i think that using the lowest common denominator isn't the wise thing to do (regarding graphical interfaces...) Most of the graphical effects provided in VISTA can be achieved in XP using software, so i think that the main reason to upgrade is not the gui but the new features (search,more secure on paper at least, etc). Summing it up, dont want the new interface, buy home basic.

Why would I want to pay so much for such a crippled OS?

What do you REALLY lose if you're upgrading from XP Home to Home basic? Eye Candy.

Xp Home doesn't have Aero Glass, so no loss there.

Xp Home doesn't have built in DVD maker, so no loss there.

XP Home doesn't have Media Center, so no loss there.

If you're running XP home you probably won't be missing Tablet PC functions.

The only thing missing between XP Home and Vista Home basic is Windows Movie Maker.

I've used Vista with both Aero and Basic interfaces. They eye candy is nice to have, but the guts of what makes vista better is still there.

I disable the exact same ui features in KDE, and HAVE BEEN DOING SO for 2 years.

http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=102&threadID=210518&messageID=2166593

I don't want the ui features, but then I would never buy MS anyway.

heck, comparing performance of server 2003 against linux, on the same hardware should have been a clue I use linux not windows.

but if you are buying vista, you should be able to use ALL new features, or the os was not written right.
If you need to change a single piece of hardware to get all the new features working, then it does not run on existing hardware.

and yes, linux has had the aero glass style ui features for two years, and it's available with bare bones older systems, no fancy graphics card required.
no massive ram required
no GHz cpu required.
[ try 233 MHz pII cpu to get it. ]

edited to add link

I think you dont get it... The OS has made to be scalable. Not everybody has the same hardware. Can you run linux "Aero" (never seen it) on a 16 color video card? Doubt it... You want the effects, you need to have the adequate hardware.

I don't think that the OS was not coded right... Its just not possible to get all the eye candy in a decent resolution while mantaining good perfomance, without doing the graphics operations on hardware. Not even Linux is able to.

Have you even seen Vista running in a decent machine? I have SUSE installed in one machine at home, and i think it's beautiful. But cannot be compared to Vista.

never seen vista running, and never will.

since KDE has the aero glass features, and has had for three years, I know what transparent borders, menus, taskbars etc look like, and I have no use for it.
[ btw, it runs perfectly fine using those features on an amd k6 @ 600mhz with 128mb sdram, ob non accelerated graphics adapter, so it's barely capable of 1024 by 768 @ 16 bits. ]

check PClinuxOS, that is their default ui config. all i386 [ since it's a merging of Mandriva front end and Debian backend, it will use Debian's default i386 binaries. ]

Mandriva 2005, 2006 and 2007 have all had portions of the aero glass style features enabled by default, I turn them off within seconds of starting to configure the ui when I check the latest releases.

try the vista transformation pak on the "Major geeks" website works fine in all my systems (areo glass included) ranging from 550mhz with 256ram to a 2.5 with 1.25 gig ram best of all cost is free!!

It is nice, I've been running it on XP Pro for about 6 months now, but it is only a first baby step. It doesn't even come close to the real features in Vista.

I installed it and like it, however, my purpose was more along the lines of just to start getting myself used to the new look and feel of Vista.

I've got XGL running on a Geforce somethingother MX, 512 mb RAM, and a 1.5ghz proc.

Vista will NOT run Aero with those specs. Hell, Vista barely runs Aero on a 2.8ghz, 1gb RAM, 128mb X600 machine.

Ya, MS bloated that sucker up and XGL proves it (years earlier I might add)

Is already 2-3 years old.

It's a 2.4 Ghz processor, with 1 GB RAM, and a Radeon 9200 video card (PCI) with only 128 MB memory. Nothing special.

I got Aero to work just fine.

As far as having to upgrade hardware...

How far back do you want MS to support old hardware? Should that Pentium III 500Mhz 128MB RAM 10GB HD PC be able to run Vista with full Aero Glass and all features?

I don't think it's really that unreasonable requiring a 128MB vid card and 1024MB of RAM for the Aero features. If you've bought a system in the past 2-3 years, you should really have bought those specs in the first place.

Otherwise, run Home Basic. Pretty easy.

As far as performance goes, every XP machine that i've upgraded to Vista so far (admittedly, only a couple) have been pretty impressive as far as performance goes. They're at least as fast as the XP installation was, and as far as my notebook goes, faster.

Server '03 is only the codebase for Vista, it's really not that great of a comparison past that, though, as Server '03 has a whole bunch of services running that Vista wouldn't even consider, as it's a desktop client, not a server OS.

don't run any version of windows
like me, go all linux and tell MS thay can't have money, until they release something worth using.

no version of ms windows, and no version of ms office are worth using.

I'm going to have to heavily disagree with you on the Office statement. Office 2007 is probably the best office suite i've seen. Hell, 2003 wasn't all that bad.

Some of the things you can do with '07 now, and the speed that you can do them have no comparison. None.

An average user can put together professional quality documents pretty easily now. And the new interface, though it took a bit for me to get used to, is one of, if not the best UI advancement in recent years.

There simply isn't a comparison.

Now, as far as the OS goes, it's all opinion. I think Linux has come ridiculously far over the years and is a great OS. Would I start selling PCs with it installed by default for my walk-in customers? Hell no.

Linux still just isn't ready for mass consumer consumption.

Now, have I put Ubuntu on a PC for one of my customers who wanted to just go online and nothing else? Yes. Would I do it for a customer who intended to someday buy off-the-shelf apps and install off-the-shelf hardware and not want to recompile or have to research hardware compatibility? No.

Reality is: 85-90% of the installed base is Windows, Mac will never get over 10-15% unless they un-tie MacOS from their hardware, and Linux still has a way to go to be a mass consumer OS.

So, why isn't Linux ready? What's holding it back?

As for Office 2007, it stinks on ice. I'm not going to fight with the ribbon interface and it offers nothing new or more robust than 2003.

Usability.

I've got customers who have a hard enough time with turning their PCs on, much less having to navigate RPM installers, dependencies, re-compiling, etc.

Yes, the UI is (thankfully) not an issue anymore for the large part thanks to GNOME, KDE, etc. but your average consumer at this point will get a headache having to deal with just normal software installation.

Not to mention the fact that if they don't have internet access they're boned completely, or they'll have to get to one of their 9 distro disks.

When I can honestly sell a PC running linux and the experience for a new casual user is up to par with Windows, it'll be ready for mass consumer consumption.

Until then, it'll be what it has been and still is: A great OS, primarily used by techs, geeks, and nerds (like us) which is highly customizable, very stable, but with a big learning curve.

If you don't think 2007 has anything significant over 2003, you haven't used it. A casual user can make print-shop graphic design quality items pretty easily. Not only that, but the ribbon has made it much easier to use.

The hypocrisy of the linux zealot crowd is amusing these days. All I ever heard was "try linux or you can't criticize it, and you'll never go back." Well, i've used it, it's been a nice project to tinker with and it's helped me get much more familiar with Unix than I was before, but guess what. I still primarily use Windows.

So it's my turn: Honestly try Office 2007. You'll like it. Otherwise, you have nothing to say until you try it.

Don't you love turning their own arguments around and using them against them? They can't handle it.

You Windows zealots need a new scriptwriter. What's most sad about you is that you nod your head in agreement, as if what the puppeted was something fresh and original rather than the same old, threadbare, hasn't-been-true-in-years crap about Linux being hard, blah blah blah. If you guys were talking about cars, you'd stick with the carburetored cars were better because those newfangled fuel-injected thingies were just too confusing.

What drives you Windows zealots? Is it some Pavlovian "Say Linux is hard, receive food pellet" reflex? But, hey, maybe that sort of thing works for you. For myself, however, I would prefer not to stay inside a cage because the rest of the rats in it say "Be afraid! The rest of the world is big and scary!" Especially when the cage is $299, periodically shocks me because it is poorly grounded, and regularly calls the head rat to tell them it has the "Genuine Cage Advantage" (and shuts off the food supply if the cage doesn't respond correctly for some reason).

Dependencies are a non-issues because now there are simple to use GUI based installers that use mirrors and resolve everything for you magically.

The only 9 disk distro I know of is Debian. Fedora is 5 CDs or 1 DVD. Ubuntu is 1 CD. SuSe is 1 DVD.

The ribbon makes Office easier to use? Man, are you an ad campaign? I've tried 2k7 and I hated it. Not only are silly things not on the ribbon by default (save as... for one), but the interface is irritating.

I ordered by mail the latest at the time which I think is actually now the second newest version of Ubuntu a few months ago.

It came on 6 CD's, thanks.

Sure, I realize that the OS probably is on just the first one, but it begs the question then, what the hell is on the next 5 CD's? Bloat?

You Linux zealots need a new scriptwriter.

How many times do I have to hear "free, as in beer"? Blah, blah, blah. Linux zealots overuse certain phrases just as often, please.

And thank you very much for the car example. Totally wrong, but nice try.

Our latest family car was a brand new 2006 Chrysler mini-van. Came in at just over $33,000 and has all the lastest bells and whistles: 6 disc CD changer, DVD player, pop down LCD TV, heated seats, leather throughout, stow and go storage, rear heat and AC, 8 speaker system, GPS, etc etc etc.

But since you are only in Technical/PC Support as your profile says, I doubt you could afford something so nice and something so technologically advanced and have 4 kids, a new house, etc. Hard to stretch that paycheck of yours that far, huh?

Your cage made of Linux is just as bad. You're trapped inside because you can't go to the store and buy or download the same software that all your buddies are using, your games selection is severely limited, the market for your job skills limited, and there is no head rat to call home when you have trouble just a bunch of unorganized sewer rats that all think they are better than the next guy because they know how to use the CLI.

Obviously, it's only the vast Windows conspiracy that is keeping linux at its small market share.

It's a huge conspiracy, that's it. It has nothing to do with any shortcomings (fictional as they are) with the OS as far as usability, learning curve, compatibility, etc.

It's the MS Men in Black.

You know guys, goin' on ten years later, you really should start to realize there's a reason it's not more thoroughly adopted. More reasonable linux folk have looked inwards and made improvements.

Other, less reasonable folk just lash out at everyone else and call them stupid.

Who are in this thread?

I have a few good reasons (that I think at least).

1. Linux hype, many people have tried linux after big hypes were made, and linux was not ready for that yet. People like myself tried it, got frustrated, and reformatted.

2. Windows, everyone knows how to do something in Windows, so why change?

3. Support files for Linux are often hard to read, or hard to find. It is getting better though

4. Installing SW, each distro has its own installer or need to compile

5. SW packages (partly due to #4) many SW vendors do not make packages for Linux.

I think that these are the main reasons that are holding back Linux. But, with some of the newest and easier to use distros now, Linux does have a good chance to move forward a bit. If more techs knew how to use and be able to perform basic troubleshooting in Linux, then more people would try it out again.

Rickk, your question has been answered many times in many different forums right here, so you can't claim ignorance. However, since you have a short memory, here's what's on those CD's:

OpenOffice (Did Windows come with Office? Nope. You have to buy extra CD's for that.)

gl-117 (Did Windows come with IL-2 Sturmovik? Nope. You have to buy those CD's separately.)

Lincity, FreeCiv, etc. (Did Windows come with SimCity or Civilization. Nope...)

The GIMP (Did Windows come with Photoshop? Nope, blah blah blah...)

I'm not going to list the other 17,000 applications that didn't come on your Windows discs but did come with Ubuntu.

And, the most important part here, is that you don't have to install anything you don't want to. Don't want a browser? Don't install one. Don't want a media player? Don't install one. Don't want foo? Don't install foo. You can't not install Internet Explorer in Windows.

You can fit an entire Linux distribution on a 64MB jump drive. Feel free to google "jump drive linux" if you don't believe me.

Optional != bloat. Required = bloat. That's the difference, and stop acting like you didn't know that already.

Hey, finally we can agree on some things.

All your points were pretty valid. Hit the nail on the head.

Once the Linux fanboys wake up and smell the coffee and stop exclusively working on making Linux technically superior and starting working on education, the user experience, marketing, etc maybe just maybe Linux will have a shot.

But until then, Linux (while a good alternative with lots of potential) will never reach critical mass.

Hey, let's face it, as much as many people hate Bill Gates and Microsoft, probably the single biggest thing he did was help to make the OS user friendly and essentially a commodity where the applications are more important than the OS.

Kind of reminds one of Henry Ford. Mass produce, lower the price, create standards and make it a neccesity in life instead of a toy or luxury.

Add to that the lower prices of software and hardware, and Bill Gates/MS/a few other companies brought the PC out of the geek's basement and put it in almost everyone's household.

I can fit Windows PE or Bart PE on a thumbdrive or a CD. What's your point?

And in case you haven't noticed, two things. One, just how many people you know use their PC exclusively with Linux and only use a thumbdrive OS? All the major Linux distros with anything of value installed are several gigs just like Windows.

Two, who cares what fits on a thumbdrive? Nowadays as thumbdrive are getting bigger and bigger, that argument will be taken away from you. I can buy a 4 GB thumbdrive for under a $100 and fit a stripped down version of Windows on it. Because that's exactly what you're talking about here...a stripped down version of Linux that people only use for specific purposes and NOT as a everyday PC.

NT

First you complain about Ubuntu coming on 6 CD's, then you say you don't care how small it is. Make up your mind.

WTF? I think this was in reference to nighthawks statement. But since I was dragged into it.
Thumbdrive Linux or cd Linux can be good for training. Thumbdrive Linux is better in that you can install apps and save items. Look at some of the options available including office, FF, and others that can be installed on a thumbdrive. Also, these OS's can be booted and used on different ssytems While saving your settings and preferences on multiple computers. Great for a tavelling geek in my opinion.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2006-06-01-thumb-drive_x.htm

just to throw a link in there.
and I have used the portable FF and it works very well.

Yes, I think that we do agree on several things. Including what MS has brought to our everyday lives.
But you forgot to mention all of the hair pulling from things like (STOP:0x0000001A, DR Watson, automatic updates, etc.). -- lol

"Once the Linux fanboys wake up and smell the coffee and stop exclusively working on making Linux technically superior and starting working on education, the user experience, marketing, etc maybe just maybe Linux will have a shot."

I'm sorry, did you just admit Linux was technically superior to MS OSes? You are correct there.

As for user education the major distros provide education as well as various third parties.

I'm not sure what you want for the user experience, but XGL is far superior to Aero Glass.

The marketing comment is total tripe. SuSe and Redhat dump TONS of money into marketing. Perhaps you don't read any trade pubs or ever crack open the Wall Street Journal.

"But until then, Linux (while a good alternative with lots of potential) will never reach critical mass."

Because you say so?

"Hey, let's face it, as much as many people hate Bill Gates and Microsoft, probably the single biggest thing he did was help to make the OS user friendly and essentially a commodity where the applications are more important than the OS."

MS OSes friendly? Everyone on the planet knows what a BSoD is. Everyone gets the "in" IT jokes about Windows now and even better the recent DNS attacks were because Bill make his OS so friendly. Thanks MS!

"Kind of reminds one of Henry Ford. Mass produce, lower the price, create standards and make it a neccesity in life instead of a toy or luxury."

If that was true the Model T would break down every 2 miles, run through gas faster than any other car, and require you to get a larger engine every time you got new tires.

That must piss off Steve Jobs every time he sees someone say that. After all, Apple was the one who went to all the trouble of stealing Xerox PARC's technology, and then they don't even get credit for being the ones who brought it to market.

Linux is here for the long haul. Keeps getting better with each kernel release.

Simply type "apt-get install abiword" then hit enter. What could be easier? I see no headache here!

for instance, after a bare install of debian, you apt-get install x-window-system kdebase kdm synaptic

and then discover synaptic doesn't run, because you are actaully missing some bits that you need.

Apt is a great idea, but unfortunately some of the dependancy decisions seem rather arbitrary.

Here is a copy and paste from the very own Ubuntu's website called "ShipIt Request" where I placed my mail order:

"5 CDs requested in 2006-07-20. 5 CDs approved and sent to the shipping company in 2006-07-25. Please note requests usually take from 4 to 6 weeks to deliver, depending on the country of shipping."

You must have noticed by now that rickk has oppositional disorder

Didn't you spot that you have diametrically opposed avatars? Surely you'll never agree on any Windows vs. Linux issue.

Here's my take on the 5 or 6 CD Linux distros: you can install exactly what you want, when you want. For free. You don't have to install anything you don't want to, and if you use the distro's package management program you can select all the packages you want, their dependencies are indicated clearly to you and you are instructed which disk to put in the drive and when to put it in. I found this easy to do as a complete newbie with Red Hat and Mandrake - a no-brainer.

That brings me to my next point.

All this crap about it being hard work is really irksome. I have a lot of (barely computer literate) workmates who struggle to do anything more than the simplest things in Windows, and yet they can misuse Linux just as well... if that makes any sense. I work in a dual OS environment by the way, where we use Linux to do our core work and Windows for supporting tasks (but it's being phased out completely early next quarter).
These same people struggle to install most Windows apps properly, and if there are any configuration screens that pop up during or immediately after the installation they shriek and run away (or stay and make a mess of it). They download all sorts of dodgy warez that come bundled with toolbars and keyloggers and packet sniffers. And guess who has to clean it all up?

My own experience of Linux has been very positive. At work it's a Red Hat based "open" Linux that, naturally, utilises the rpm (easy enough to work with, even though I was a relative newbie). Debian - that's great, but I found it slightly more daunting, but at least it was rewarding (not like Red Hat or Mandrake!). Slackware was trickier, but Slax (the stripped down UFD-friendly bootable ISO distro based on Slackware) was child's play - better than Bart PE, but I guess Linux is completely modular, so it has an advantage. The clear winner for me was openSuse 10.x - outstanding in every way. But then, everyone has their personal favourite.

Still, Windows remains way ahead in market share for so many reasons. One reason is the lock-in factor: PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and MS Word documents that are just slightly beyond the translational powers of Open Office. There are many third-party apps that Windows users and companies have become dependent on. Not because there is no viable alternative, but because the dependencies go back to a time when there was no real alternative. Now they think that the change would be too painful.

Of course, there are some great apps for Windows, such as Excel and Diskeeper. Thanks to the likes of sysinternals, us geeks have more control over Win2k/XP than ever before (not as sure about Vista as of yet).

Personally, I have a lot of time for Windows these days. Since Win98 it's been OK and since Win2K it's been very good. I'm using it now. Hurrah! But I have to say that having just a Windows XP disc is not going to get you very far. The included MS apps are, quite frankly, not very good at all. Notepad isn't going to do much for you, even though it's the staple of 99% of Windows users for jotting and too much more. The windows defragmenter is terrible. I'll stop there, because most of the other apps I can think of fall somewhere between those two extremes.
The third-party s/w on the other hand can be outstanding, but many of my lifesaving utilities started their lives out on Linux or Unix: PuTTY, Mozilla, Apache, Tomcat, MySQL, GIMP2, Open Office 2 and so on. Many other favourites have Linux equivalents. For other windows apps, there's always something that does the same job on Linux so there's nothing to stop anyone from switching over completely.

So why don't I switch, I hear you say? I suppose my WinXP is stable, secure and lean enough. It does what I need it to do and performs those tasks well. It came pre-installed on my laptop and after uninstalling all the junk I didn't need and cleaning up the registry, copying across all my favourite apps (either open source, free or "free"), I was happy as a pig in the proverbial. My PC's story was different, I installed Win2k on my PC before going dual boot with Debian, later I switched to WinXP Pro / openSuse 10.x. I primarily use openSuse when working on my PC.

I guess that basically what I'm trying to say is that, in many ways, you're both right

Is Vista really going to push a significant number of users over to Linux or OSX? Hardly.
No matter how bad Vista turns out to be when the dust settles, people will stick with it and complain. It's like those people that complain constantly about high bank charges and never switch to a cheaper bank. Fear of change will keep these users put. It really doesn't matter how ready Linux is. As rickk said, it'll take a lot of marketing - not the forte of those open source GNU types!!!

From what I've seen of Vista, though, doesn't indicate that it's at all bad. It has a few new annoyances, but XP came with a few of its own. Some reg fixes and hacks and good ol' SP1 will most likely fix that. By the time SP2 comes out, I might just be ready to switch, especially if I'm in the market for a new laptop or PC by then. Unless I go MacBook Pro / OSX crazy.

Then you can learn to use something that is a more secure, faster, more stable working environment...

Rickk You need to try to find a different tune it is still off pitch...

It takes me 1/3 the time to build and I can install them with a kickstart server, or I can load them from CD with no issue... '

Only a couple of wirelkess card have made me slow down...

What is it
Linux v Windows
Windows v Linux
Off the Subject
O by the way a true professional would learn all they could about any OS available
Pleassse don't use time as an excuse

What about, for businesses, it's tight intregration with SharePoint Services and SharePoint Server?

That's just one huge difference and an enormous one for companies like the one I work for.

Sharepoint sucks

It is non intuitive for admin tasks and setup, along with many functions.
Secondly, Office 03 works well with sharepoint, as I use it all of the time.

Ok, I've been told in this thread to backup my opinions with facts.

Go ahead, you hate SharePoint and say it's not intuitive or whatever. Prove it and/or propose an alternative that is more intuitive and will integrated well with existing hardware, software, and tech support, etc in companies today.

Thanks for your opinion, but that's all it is. And you know the saying about opinions.

The only difference between you and me is that I have 90% of the desktop market agreeing with me and you have, I don't know, maybe 5%.

Not always is the majority right.

Often it is the man who goes against the grain who is right. The followers are just that followers.

The 5% probably are all in the top 50% of users...

Rick must have lawyers and accountants to support, not engineeers...

If you can't get Win 2k3 running fast on a dual core AM2 3800 then you obviously did something wrong.

I'm running Win 2k3 right now on the most generic of generics white box right now that is only a 1.2 Ghz processor, single core, with 1 GB of RAM. Nothing special, on-board video and audio, blah blah blah and it runs just fine.

Your arrogance and lies only can take you so far. But then again, for those of us that have been on TR awhile, we know your opinions...worthless.

it's SERVER 2k3 not win 2k3
and it's fully DEFAULT settings, exactly as the linux server was on the same hardware.

as soon as I test different distros for AD connectivity, I'll be removing the malware and putting linux back on.
[ 2 hous for server 2k3 to format a single 250 GB partition? 45 minutes to install, then add drivers? it only took linux a total of 25 minutes to format and install, with all drivers loaded out of the box, no adding them later ]

I meant Server 2003 and you know it. After all, I was responding to your comments.

Anyways, you're still full of crap and you know it.

I've installed Server 2003 at least 30 times in the last year and I've never seen it take that long to format a drive.

Our audience can decide for themselves. My opionion which is founded by working with MS products day in and day out, or your opinion which is founded on an intense hatred for MS and clearly a lack of recent experience with it...you even admit it yourself as you repeatedly say you'll never touch it unless you have to.

How can you be an expert or have an opinion worth listening to when you don't use the product day in and day out.

worth listening to when you don't use the product day in and day out."

This from someone who badmouths Linux and doesn't use it day in and day out.

"Hello, Mr. Pot."

"Hi, Mr. Kettle. My, you're looking black today."

You're right, I don't use Linux as I have repeatedly tried it again and again and find it to be a pain in my arse.

But I don't think any of my comments really questioned what his Linux "facts" were. I only pointed out that his "facts" about Windows were wrong.

You merely claimed they were wrong--you didn't demonstrate that they were. But for you, saying something is proof enough. There's no need to get things all messy with facts and those other inconvenient things that get in the way of your truthiness.

that's why I didn't bother replying.
I know it took server 2003 r2 two hours to format the 250 Gb partition, I timed it.
[ sata drive yet, I would hate to see what it would do with a pata drive ]

I have to wait for the default conf to load a window, or open a menu, when the same hardware powered by linux was fast.

and I changed nothing in either os, left them at defaults.

rickk is under the mistaken belief that everyone uses exhorbitant amounts of ram, because with ms products you need exhorbitant amounts of ram. I generally use minimal ram, since I don't enable bloat by default.
[ the system slow under server 2003 only has 512 mb ram, tons of ram for linux. ]

Ok, let me get this straight.

You have a AMD dual core 64 bit 3800+ processor (nice) and only 512 MB of RAM? Are you retarded or did you just run out of money?

Let me guess too, this is a PC instead of a server? And what exactly were you planning on doing with Server 2003 with only 512 MB of RAM?

I know, I know, with Linux you could conquer the world with 512 MB of RAM.

On the flip side, I have a 1.2 Ghz single core processor at home with 1 GB of RAM running Server 2003 with SharePoint, SQL, Exchange, AD, DHCP, hosting a very small website, etc and it seems to be running just fine.

Arguments aside, why don't you just spend the extra $60 and get the additional 512 MB of RAM just so we don't have to hear you whine all the damn time.

that Win environments are much more resource intensive than Linux.

Hey, he is a Linux Guru, you are not, obviously both of you are biased. I use both and have preferences for each ones use. But that still does not change the fact that Vista is huge and resource hungry and that Linux is much leaner/faster to do many of the same tasks.