Discussion on:

Don't be misled by these 10 Windows Vista myths

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