Vista

[Haelian]

I think you're crazy to be using Win2k at this point, with so many compatibility and (alleged) stability issues. I was clueless towards computers when I was running Win2k, so I don't remember much about it.

Everyone has different experiences with operating systems. I know a friend that has been running the same copy of XP ever since it came out and has never had to reformat or go through major motions to repair it. But I've reformatted 4 times so far with XP, each of which were unavoidable and incredibly annoying. It depends on how you handle your PC; which security programs you use, how much you customize the OS, etc. The less you do with the computer, the less trouble you'll have really.

I don't think I'll be buying a brand new, fully loaded PC now that I know how to upgrade any piece of hardware in my current one. So it doesn't look like I'll ever be running OS X, unless I like win a Mac or something...

Vista went gold on the 9th (or 10th I forgot) and will be available in stores on Jan. It is *available* already if you know where to look.

Without security updates and all that jazz, I don't think I'll be *getting* Vista till its official release.

[SephYuyX]

I decided to give Vista another chance and play around with it a bit more, so I went and installed Vista Ultimate.

Just installing it gave me a whole new perspective, it was completly changed and revamped to actaully work. Upon finishing it, it gave me the familiar first boot up configuration screens that were not there the first time I played with Vista. It also installed quite a bit faster (even though it was slower than an XP install) compaired to the first version as well. All in all very smooth though. However the computer didnt have a DVD drive and I was installing it via a network drive. Its UDF system is pretty picky and I had to extract the .iso as it wouldnt read after being burned, even on the same computer.

The PC its installed on is a P4 2.8GHz with 512RAM and ive yet to run into a single problem, its an older Dell and it seems to be fine. I installed it previously on a newer Dell with better specs and I had to change a lot of things just to get it booted up.

Desktop wise nothing really changed, same with folders, and to my surprise there was not one driver that had to be installed, Vista took complete care of it, unlike the first time I used it where it had no drivers at all. Same with printers, no problem there, guess they fixed that problem as well.

Media Center is a built in feature of Ultimate, and its quite nice to play around with, but a bit hard without a remote.. of which, the bluetooth technology looks like it works well this time around too.

I am surprized that Vista is not that much of a resource hog, I can run it fine, where on the same machine XP seems to bog it down. However Vista is very large, I installed Vista and Office 12 along with Viso, Project, Infopath and Groove 2007, and they alone take up 15gb.

They have improved the UAC 10x since the last time as well, although very annoying at times, I hope it does what it does and actually prevent a lot of security holes;l I also hope bitlocker works out too.

Windows Update and Windows Defender is built in this time around too, its sort of odd, but I think it iwll work out well.

The MS games are fun, the old favorites with 3 new ones. The Chess is pretty slick even though the dumbest AI setting almost raped me. They are basic games, but require a lot of graphical power.

The computer I have it set up on got a score of 1, and I think the max is 5, but even on such a crappy computer I see no issues at all, atm.

Office12 looks and operates really well, and the UI is completly new and works well with it, aside from that ive yet to go indepth with it.

I plan to get everything set up, then put it in a public space and have other workers and guests play around with it and see how they feel about it.


Ive also been reading up on Exchange 2007 and went to an MS meeting the other week pertaining the new line of servers and im really amazed with it. It comes with a crap load of new options inlcuding a built in PBX, but its does come with a heafty CAL price, as well as having to by a server thats 64bit.

Another thing that shocked me was how fast MS dropped x86 and went to 64, most of their new products will only work on 64bit systems, but I guess it is for the better.


I still here a lot of people complaining about Vista, but im not sure what versions they are running, they may just be using the generic MS downloaded version, but I havent noticed any problems in Ultimate.

This almost temps me to switch to Vista right away, but I do know better and I will wait for awhile untill more things are discovered.

I do agree that this is the best OS MS has ever released though, its amazing in most of the feilds it covers, I am definitely excitied about seeing this OS become mainstream.

[Aodh]

The Chess is pretty slick even though the dumbest AI setting almost raped me.

I've found that with most chess programs, they seem to not allow the computer to do anything too 'stupid' which usually ends up being the same style of play dispite difficulty. Oddly enough I usually beat them more on the hardest settings than the easy ones. :-/

I've been avoiding 'finding' a copy of Vista because of all the security things that they said they implemented in the upgrade. A tighter key system or something I can't even remember now. Was planning on getting one copy through my Dad's expense account for his work computer then using it on all of mine. How does the security things seem now?

[Devek]

So...

Is Vista going to make ffxi, firefox, or putty run better?

If I use it for a fileserver will it beat Samba or still get its dick kicked in the mud?

If I use it for a PBX will it be supported by hardware vendors and stay up for years at a time like Asterisk?

Does Vista support its own server virtualalization yet or do I have to still rely on third party tools like VMware that require complete OS installs for each and every tiny service I want to insulate?

Even on the desktop can I do simply things like access files on sftp servers and tread them as local files with the rest of my applications.. or do I sitll have to download and upload everything :/

Does Vista even come with a fucking ssh client yet? wtf mate?

[Tekki]

i seriously hate pineapple jello, the most disgusting thing in the world is eatting jello with any fruit chunks, especially pineapple. But i picked that option. Im going to wait for another few months to see how many bugs they can work out before I get vista.

[Zigma]

whatever you do, unless you have like 4 fucking gigs of ram on your PC, don't install the x64 version lol.

[dietvanillapepsi]

Here's a "funny cuz it's true" video from NY times and accompanying article. If your video does not default to the Vista video just click on the link below the video.

Link here

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/te...l?pagewanted=1

I agree that this OS looks like it's going to be MicroSoft's best yet but only cuz they stole more from Apple. I'm a user of both so to be fair, there are some things that MS does better than Apple. Like I prefer Outlook to Apple Mail any day. Am I going to be getting Vista? Of course. But it's like car insurance. You don't want to pay for it but you have to.

(edited by LW - page breaking link oh my!)

[Kimiko]

I think you're crazy to be using Win2k at this point, with so many compatibility and (alleged) stability issues. I was clueless towards computers when I was running Win2k, so I don't remember much about it.

Everyone has different experiences with operating systems. I know a friend that has been running the same copy of XP ever since it came out and has never had to reformat or go through major motions to repair it. But I've reformatted 4 times so far with XP, each of which were unavoidable and incredibly annoying. It depends on how you handle your PC; which security programs you use, how much you customize the OS, etc. The less you do with the computer, the less trouble you'll have really.

I don't think I'll be buying a brand new, fully loaded PC now that I know how to upgrade any piece of hardware in my current one. So it doesn't look like I'll ever be running OS X, unless I like win a Mac or something...

Vista went gold on the 9th (or 10th I forgot) and will be available in stores on Jan. It is *available* already if you know where to look.

Without security updates and all that jazz, I don't think I'll be *getting* Vista till its official release.

Yeah, Win2k support is gonna be dropped like a bad habbit soon enough. They've already done it with 95/98 and ME.

[octopus]

After playing with Vista basically since they have it available on MSDN, I'm going to hold off on completely migrating to vista.

I find myself basically turning off UAC because of the annoyance, and a lot of the programs I have to set them to run as administrator to work perfectly.

And since I stream my anime to my xbox 360, and transcode 360's vista version is still super buggy, I really don't see a reason to update yet. I'd wait until more programs release vista specific versions.

[Shuemue]

Well Wired don't recommend it yet.

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/revie ... n_index_24

As for security, Microsoft have had companies like Symantec, McAfee and so on, up in arms regarding kernel access. This basically means they're going to struggle to write decent realtime AV and firewall scanning.

Enjoy Windows Defender. >_>

[Bwelch]

According to Alex St. John Vista is the devil incarnate.

lmao

[Devek]

I still don't see how Vista is going to make firefox or ffxi run any better..

[Po]

Is this available for purchase and whatnot yet? Or are you guys getting it from somewhere else?
If it is a torrent could someone post it? Thanks!

[dietvanillapepsi]

Avail for retail on Jan 30. It is already available for commercial use.

[Aladwar]

Really, really don't care about Vista. For anything I need to do on Windows XP, I just dual-boot Windows XP through Boot Camp. Leopard on the other hand, is something I'm thoroughly looking foward to.

[Po]

Yes Leopard will be awesome.. when is that due out?
And how much is Vista going to retail for? 200?

[Bwelch]

Happy Vista New Year!
The Saint by Alex St. John

Alex St. John was one of the founding creators of Microsoft’s DirectX technology. He is the subject of the book “Renegades Of The Empire” about the creation of DirectX and Chromeffects, an early effort by Microsoft to create a multimedia browser. Today Alex is president and CEO of WildTangent Inc., a technology company devoted to delivering CD-ROM-quality entertainment content over the Web.

With the impending Vista launch and the next-generation console wars finally in full swing, there’s so much to talk about I almost don’t know where to start. We’ll begin by revisiting some predictions I’ve made in past columns and making some new ones for this year.

First, the console wars; for several years I’ve written that Sony has made some fatal mistakes in its PS3 strategy. I’ve said the PS3 is over-engineered, bizarrely architected, and hard to develop for. I’ve also said that if Sony doesn’t aggressively try to match the level of investment Microsoft has made in software tools and online infrastructure, the PS3 won’t be able to compete with the new generation of online console games and business models. To be fair, I’ve also said that the Xbox 360 architecture is unnecessarily difficult to develop for, but in spite of this Microsoft has made the strength of the Xbox 360’s online services a major differentiating feature. Frankly, I counted Nintendo out of the game, a point about which I now believe I was pleasantly mistaken. The Nintendo Wii is actually a very elegant console design with classic Nintendo emphasis on great gameplay over gratuitous computing power. As ever, Nintendo gets it right by recognizing that great games start with the controller.

I made the prediction some time ago that the Xbox 360 would close the gap in console market share with Sony. It appears that this particular “prophecy” from The Saint will play out in 2007.

2007 will also be the year I get to find out how the rest of the world reacts to the “Can’t do that!” Vista OS. I just hope that in the midst of all the Vista hype some intelligent journalist takes the time to ask a few of the hard questions about Vista, such as:

1. Why do I want 3D Windows? Does tilting text sideways somehow make it easier to read?

2. If Vista’s major feature is better security, why do I need to pay for Microsoft Live OneCare? Is Vista not actually secure? If Microsoft didn’t know how to make Vista secure, how did the company figure it out for OneCare? Can I just get OneCare for WinXP and skip buying Vista? Isn’t Microsoft making commercial security products for its own OS a little like being a tobacco shop owner who moonlights as a lung doctor?

3. Explain how Limited User Accounts actually make me more secure? Is it because always accepting the OS warnings ensures my security by preventing me from using my computer for anything? How do I know which combination of warnings to accept or ignore to achieve security while still being able to use my PC productively?

4. Why is imitating Apple UI features and security an OS improvement? Isn’t there a reason most people don’t use Macs? Could it be that Apple’s “security” stems from having no market share and thus presenting an uninteresting target to hackers? Or could it be that Apple users have so few choices in software that it’s easy for everyone to remember the handful of applications that are safe to install?

5. Why should we shell out 300 bucks for an Xbox 360 if Vista is supposed to be a great game OS? If it’s not a great game OS, did Microsoft screw it up deliberately to drive Xbox 360 sales? Why would I need to buy a new Vista PC for anything other than playing games? Did Microsoft find a way to make Office 2007 drag on my old 3GHz Pentium?

6. Why is the Vista Start menu harder to navigate and more confusing than the old WinXP start menu? Did they really need four years just to make Windows harder to use?

Just a few fun Vista questions that I’m sure the rest of the press and analysts won’t ask, but consumers should. The uniquely Microsoft mentality that creates an OS like Vista can be found even in their public statements. When asked if the late launch of Vista would kill Christmas sales for the PC OEMs, Microsoft replied that it shouldn’t because 80 to 85% of PCs sold this Xmas will be “Vista Eligible.” What the company didn’t mention was how the poor schmucks in the remaining 15% would discover their brand-new PC couldn’t be “upgraded.

Computer Power User

[Exoduso]

If you really want Vista, at least wait a while... I bet it's full of bugs now. (Windows XP, anyone?)

[Bwelch]

If you really want Vista, at least wait a while... I bet it's full of bugs now. (Windows XP, anyone?)

I'm sticking with Windows XP for now. Besides DX10 nothing else looks that appealing.

[Kiro]

If I can't register it with a random serial key from a warez site, I don't want it. :<