Yesterday we reported on ‘Ten Reasons Not to Get Vista‘, featuring two rebuttals. APCMag, the publisher of the first article, now also published a rebuttal. “I’ve been running Vista at APC since the earliest leaked builds, and witnessed its extraordinary evolution as Microsoft meandered its way towards the final product. Sure, the earlier versions included some bold features which were dropped for the sake of familiarity in the final version, but there’s still lots to appreciate about the ‘RTM’ version of Vista. I’m not talking here about a nicer user interface or security – I figure APC readers already know how to run a secure XP box and how to de-Fisher-Price it. Here are the real benefits: things that will actually make a difference to you day-to-day.” Instant Update: The original author has now published a rebuttal to the two rebuttals. Isn’t the internet fun?
I’ve read the Reasons… none of them let me switch to Windows.
“UI built for the era of video and digital photography”
WTF… nice that Windows arrived the year 2000.
“Image-based install”
OMFG… i MUST hav it. I like Anaconda.
“Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation”
How long? XP has good Drivers at 2001 but now? And Vista? 2007 good Drivers and in a few year?
“Desktop search and search folders built in”
Nice Copy… needfulcopy for Win Users.
“Sleep mode that actually works.”
The World has to thank Microsoft for that Technologie.
“Rock-solid laptop encryption”
Now, the World of Data is save, thank you Microsoft.
“Better file navigation”
Thats a User Thing… some people will like it others will hate it. Like KDE, GNOME, TotalCommander etc. pp.
“Inbuilt undelete”
Crazy… awsome… old…
“DirectX10”
I’m not a Gamer
“Face it, you have no choice”
I have a choice… other people have also there choices. Face it, if you want – you can.
I don’t see any reason to switch to Windows, too. Obviously this list only addresses Windows XP users (as the first list also did) as it just mentions improvements over XP. Users of Linux or MacOS won’t get too exited about Vista by reading that it finally got some features they are enjoying for years now.
Full ACK
Vista is an Step forward over XP… but nothing für MacOS or Linux Users.
What if it included a spelling and grammer checker?
Sigh…it’s grammar…
I’d get it too then.
like they say on one popular site: karma whore!
I only see a few I personally give a damn about.
Namely:
2. Image-based install
Very nice for us IT folk, but let’s be serious here. How often does Joe User bother to install Windows anyway? Maybe once every couple years if ever?
4. Desktop search and search folders built in
Nothing that can’t be added with third party software, mind you, but still nice to have for those of us spoiled by Spotlight and Beagle
6. Rock-solid laptop encryption
Should be obvious.
I’m not really sure if reason #10 is something to be proud of, but I think it definitely will be the reason the majority of computer users around the globe will “get” Vista, voluntarily or not. Good idea from the author to include it, even though it’s not really a reason to get Vista per say.
I’m glad i have a choice since i build my own systems.Besides even if i would buy a complete system i would format the HD and install gentoo.
It’s out soon, thank goodness, then we’ll know whether it’s great, or terrible, or somewhere in between (most likely). Then after a few more months of blogging everyone will (hopefully) shut up and get on with life.
…because it did not work in Windows XP (perhaps some versions that I was lucky enough to use?)…
Microsoft have a bad impression at what Unicode is. In the MSDN library you find references like “Unicode uses two bytes instead of one”. Bollocks. Unicode has many variations and the one that Microsoft happens to support is deprecated in favour of UTF-8. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s whole operating system tried to implement UTF-16 (which of course it not compatible with ASCII). There is UTF-8 support for outputting documents in Word and Notepad etc, but for the most of it, it’s all UTF-16. I can’t find any sources to say that they’ve gone fully native on UTF-8. So Unicode searches might still be a no no.
Extolling the power of the new search in Vista:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000766.html
That’s reason enough for me. Worth the cost of Vista? If you measure time in number of mouse clicks saved (like myself), most certainly.
Yes, but at the same time, it’s killed my one killer feature in XP. The ability to type Win, U, U to shut down or Win, U, R to restart. Shutting down Vista properly has become kludgy and slow in comparison to Ubuntu or OS X.
“Extolling the power of the new search in Vista:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000766.html
That’s reason enough for me. Worth the cost of Vista? If you measure time in number of mouse clicks saved (like myself), most certainly.”
Take a look at this small, free, open source app for XP:
http://www.launchy.net/
OK, do you still have a reason?
Download from:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=132975
Extolling the power of the new search in Vista:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000766.html
That’s reason enough for me. Worth the cost of Vista? If you measure time in number of mouse clicks saved (like myself), most certainly.
Seems like spotlight’s rip off. Honestly, the color preference is as ugly as linux.
Seems like spotlight’s rip off. Honestly, the color preference is as ugly as linux.
“Linux” has a “color preference”?
Reasons not to get Vista: I hate MS
Rebuttal: But I love MS
Counter-Rebuttal: Well I hate MS
Awesome comment.
Reasons not to get Vista: Because you hate MS, or because it has nothing you need, or because despite five years of work it has nothing you need, or because it’s DRM-crippled. Or because it costs a small fortune. And because even the normally Windows-worshipping trade press are unimpressed with Vista.
Rebuttal: But I love MS, and I think they deserve even MORE money for yet more dysfunctional crap.
Counter-Rebuttal: A fool and his money are easily parted.
Edited 2007-01-22 13:10
Actually I find the comments given for Thom’s own rebuttal to be better in overall than the rebuttals themselves
About using-notusing-using-ornot Vista issues… we’ll use it anyway, so this whole thing is way too pointless.
About using-notusing-using-ornot Vista issues… we’ll use it anyway, so this whole thing is way too pointless.
Actually, no. Even assuming that I suddenly, after 3 years, find an overwhelmingly need to run Windows next time I buy a PC, if at all possible I will be running XP on it. It’s a smaller footprint, and Microsoft need to have what people have been saying about Vista explained to them. In the language they understand ($$).
December 2007: Well, hello ReactOS .. goodbye Win2K3.
Vista? Naaah… I’ll never succumb to a system which requires 1 GB of ram just to show me its fancy desktop
These are good reasons. Much better than the half-assed and poorly reasoned rebuttals to the reasons not to given before.
The bottom line: Get Vista eventually, but early adoption is not advised.
Is this guy who wrote it even have a computer at home?
All, what was written shows either he is drunk or crazy.
Drivers?!
Even nvidia was unable to produce unbuggy drivers for that OS, and digging deep inside their driver’s manual you will see most of the limitations are caused by the vista. (nvidia actually divides and lists limitations as nvidia caused and OS caused).
“4. Desktop search and search folders built in”
Alright, I get desktop search to crash always at the end of the search when the search folder is a network share. and on the same machine with windows server 2003 this never happen.
Also, search for an application from the start menu and click on it to launch that application and you will be rewarded with nothin; that simple, search results are not launchable.
“7. Better file navigation”
And worst administrator navigation.
before I used to quickly launch firewall settings window on windows Xp, by just running “firewall.cpl”
now I have to type “rundll.exe firewall.cpl,ShowControlPanel 0” with attention to the Capital S in Show and Capital C in Control and P on Panel!
In “ncpa.cpl” they have removed File>new connection. and replaced it with new incomming connection. and kept the previous in another window called “Network and sharing center” and even renamed it to “setup a connection or a network”
“Music folders come up in columns of ID3 tags, a bit like iTunes”
There is nothing like iTunes; its a technological marvel, they even integrated iphone with it. and the interface is never confusing like MS windows media player; which is hard to get to features due to Whole OS design mismatch (ie, inconsistency).
“8. Inbuilt undelete”
better be called “Office files undelete” or rollback. But the phrase “Inbuilt undelete” must be reserved to something more powerful, lets say like Mac OSX 10.5 upcoming rollback engine; by the way try “shift+Del” a file and then ask vista to retrieve it!
Sorry, for reminding you with the upcomming technological scandel, namely vista.
This is tripe!
“UI built for the era of video and digital photography”
Macs have been doing that for years. Core Image in Tiger lets the user layer multiple, real time, HD 3D filters over running video. Hardware acceleration has been available since 2001. Macs come bundled with iPhoto, a decent photo manager. Vista has only just arrived in the 21st century with these two features, and apparently that’s a reason to switch??
“Image-based install”
Wow, something you’ll only do once, and for most people, never, since they’ll buy OEM. What a solid reason to upgrade!
“Up-to-date driver base and better driver handling on installation”
Yes, but it’s still not “just works”. Plug in a USB mouse, wait for three popup bubbles, then use mouse. Accidently move it to another USB port, get the same three popup bubbles. Macs, plugin the mouse, use the mouse – You can even use a wireless bluetooth Mac mouse on the *firmware* bootloader – before the OS has even loaded.
“Desktop search and search folders built in”
Been enjoying that feature since the release of Tiger – in 2005. You can get Google Desktop or MSN Live Desktop to do the same in XP. This isn’t a valid reason to fork out for a whole new OS.
“Sleep mode that actually works.”
Mac users have been enjoying instant-sleep for a /very/ long time. If you’re a laptop user, then maybe this is a valid upgrade reason – other than the fact your battery life is going to be halved.
“Rock-solid laptop encryption”
Also long available with Macs
“Better file navigation”
Better how? Infinite junction paths? A control panel that looks like a link-blog? A loading bar for Explorer? Finder sucks, so Explorer has had that beat for a long time, but Vista brings little innovation to the table.
“Inbuilt undelete”
Nothing a freeware utility couldn’t do
“DirectX10”
Which no games use yet, and developers are wary about.
“Face it, you have no choice”
So what does that make me?? A phantom, a ghost – a figment of his imagination? I don’t need Windows, and I don’t need Vista. I have plenty of choice besides.
2 Kroc:
Yeah so is Vista like a bad thing from your points? Do you prefer to set up XP for 2 hours straight (with floppy in hand for RAIDs), and then spend another afternoon downloading and installing plethora of freeware apps to get Vista’s functionality to a limited extent? You get more for your buck (comparable editions of course), and somehow I fail to see that as a bad thing.
As for your point No.1 (UI), Macs cannot even show thumbnails for videos in Finder (yeah, one at a time via Preview column). Finder sucks to no end. I quite like OSX as a whole, though. But please be fair to Vista. You could actually do almost everything you can do with OSX in OS 9, couldn’t you. I don’t think you have OS 9 installed. I don’t want to see likes of Windows 9x again. Let’s move on.
Edited 2007-01-22 12:37
Yup, I will definitely admit to the crapness of Finder at the drop of a hat. We can only hope it’ll be fixed in Leopard, but if they don’t; you can expect hundreds of “what’s wrong with Leopard” articles rolling by on OSAlert. And if they do fix it? There’ll still be hundreds of “What’s wrong with Leopard” articles
Since most people set up XP very infrequently (and those that do can do it much quicker anyway), ease of installation is not a decent feature or reason to upgrade. In fact, those that frequently install XP probably do it from an image anyway!
The fact of the matter is that nearly all of the new features are only available in the Ultimate edition, or have been stolen and mangled from other OSs.
If I had the money to afford Vista Ultimate, I’d buy a second hand Mac.
frankly, if someone wants vista because he wants to impress the female neighbor, get it.
if the same person wants to do this with linux/xgl/beryl, so do it.
For me, I haven’t seen *any* reason to get it at all.I’m not impressed at all. The AERO interface is just weak compared to compiz, beryl. Note that Beryl’s just a fork of compiz and a few onths old. It doesn’t require a lot of hardware, a simple ATI or NVIDIA card will do, costing EUR 55.
Of course there will be a hefty momentum soon, when MS again gets away with the preinstall-trick.
People will find out the cost of vista, with the DRM, driver signature revokes etc will cause some headaches.
Anyways, the ideal OS is the OS that does what I need it to do so that I can do my work.
Windows (any version) doesn’t do that for me. I use Unix, wether it’s BSD, linux, SunOS, whatever.
Its wonderful that Mac can do all these nice features and things that Vista will be doing however you do need an Apple Computer to use OSX while Windows can be installed on the x86 machine at lower prices now less. Looking at Circuit City I found 3 machines with 1gb of memory and a decent enough video card for vista and of those three 2 of them had dual core processors. Also on top of that they all cost less then $500
you can forget some of the functions in vista with that low cost pc
I still haven’t had the chance to give Vista a try, but I’m still planning to, just out of curiosity. But I have simply no intention of switching to it, or even use it. Why? Because I have no reason to do that. I use Linux happily for everything else than gaming, and Win2k still handles the gaming part more than well. Desktop search? It’s available in Linux, but I don’t use it there either. DirectX 10 games? My hardware won’t run those games anyway. HD-DVD? I’m happy enough with my old DVDs
Oh, but I’ve got several reasons not to switch to Vista: Win2k handles everything I want from Windows. Linux still handles everything else. Vista costs a lot. And considering my hardware, Vista would likely run, Aero too, but that’d be it. If I actually tried to do anything else with it, I think it just wouldn’t be able to handle the load.
Similar situation here. I’m still quite happy with my 2k. I use it for gaming only. However, I have just purchased a Vista Home Basic copy. Why? Well, mainly for decent driver support. And I’m sure, we’ll see compability problems with Vista only games, even only with DirectX 9. Because here in Germany you can buy SB editions (System Builder) legally, it was only 70 bucks on e-bay.
No
What’s real fun is that the author can say anything, we’re sure it will be linked from here… It can be as stupid as “Vista remembers me Terminator’s “hasta la vista baby”” : that’s a reason for you to buy it, or it sucks because “Microsoft is bad”,… it will without any doubt linked from here…
We know that most of the people posting won’t install Vista, I have installed it, and I like it, but not enough to take XP off my spouses computers, or to switch from FreeBSD or Ubuntu, but for the average user, I think it has some good stuff to offer, especially in the security/stability areas.
What we must keep in mind, is that we are not the real target audience of Vista, we’re the gravy.
[sarcasm]
Also read the follow-up article: ‘Ten Reasons You Should Not Get Vista’
[/sarcasm]
Seriously, this is all about preferences. However, it’s articles like this published on the internet and in magazines deceiving the computer illiterate public into thinking Microsoft created something innovative, something worth paying for. It’s the same with every new Windows release.
About 1 1/2 year ago the biggest German “newspaper”, “Bild” (something like the British “Sun”) published an article about Vista. The title read something like “This is computing in 2006.”
Total BS, that’s obvious, since all of Vista’s high praised “new” features had already been implemented in other OSes way earlier. Not to mention the MS-1000-men-staff wasn’t able to complete the main “killer-features” in time. But the unwary folks will buy into this stuff…
Note: I’m not saying opensource is about innovation (sadly, it’s not)
1) 5 long years of developpement by the greatest programer–band of the world
2) its cost may give us the “best ” of the world money maker
3) The most securized os that you can use only if your dad authorize it
4) helping Bill to have a peacefull retreat
5) Confirm Microsoft as the lonely company anouncing it’s fantastic capacity in innovation
6) The capacity now to be alarmed if I use piracy no matter to go around : I am guilty
7) The implication of Microsoft in hardware pollution
8) Against those dreamers communists from “Alienux”
9) I don’t understand the rest of the world.
10) because beeee beeeee I love to be as everybody.
….
I think we have a winner.
#1 Platform not tied to GNU/Cultist movement.
#2 It’s even faster than XP.
#3 Better Drivers. More stable overall system.
#4 DX10. Crysis
#5 No need to read obscure web pages for hacks/workarounds.
“#1 Platform not tied to GNU/Cultist movement.”
Correct, instead tied to a Commercial/Cultist movement
“#2 It’s even faster than XP.”
Wait and see
“#3 Better Drivers. More stable overall system.”
Hopefully
“#4 DX10. Crysis
”
Aye, though a Microsoft marketing decision
“#5 No need to read obscure web pages for hacks/workarounds”
MS knowledge base is more obscure than Ubuntu’s
“”#2 It’s even faster than XP.”
Wait and see ”
No need to wait. Vista really IS faster with launching apps and switching between apps (heavy multitasking). I DON’T CARE how it’s done, it may load EVERYTHING at startup, that’s fine with me. There’s no need to reboot most of the time anyway, sleep works great and fast (I know, not everyone is so lucky
). As long as it works and makes snappy experience (as it does), I am happy.
Several flavours of Linuces (SLED 10, Mandriva and opensuse 9.2) on the other hand, are in fact much SLOWER than Vista on my 3k A64 with 1,5GB RAM.
Edited 2007-01-22 15:33
I have not seen the final version yet, just RC2. You are right, some applications tend to run a wee bit better whereas others totally suck (e.g. Rome Total War). Im sure that’s not Microsoft’s fault but an application issue. I am the lucky owner of a dual core CPU and yes, there seems to be an overall improvement with task distribution. So it is not too bad and Vista is a progress. But I am used to switch off the 3D effects (same with Linux). In my experience, after three days of Wow!, it’s just another nuisance. Thus I am not in the position to assess the stability and speed of the new interface. This is also one reason, why I decided to stick with Vista Basic which is enough for my needs and the missing bits will be filled with 3rd party apps.
Correct, instead tied to a Commercial/Cultist movement
Suppose so. OSS are heavily invested in copyright so that would make’em Commercial/GNU/Cultist. Better?
Wait and see
Vista RC2 clears all doubts.
Aye, though a Microsoft marketing decision
Evolutionary decision. Probably needed new plumbing.
MS knowledge base is more obscure than Ubuntu’s
Not when the users needs to input obscure commands in the X terminal to setup something trivial like a game.
“Correct, instead tied to a Commercial/Cultist movement
Suppose so. OSS are heavily invested in copyright so that would make’em Commercial/GNU/Cultist. Better?”
Much better
“Wait and see
Vista RC2 clears all doubts.”
Nice to hear that.
“Aye, though a Microsoft marketing decision
Evolutionary decision. Probably needed new plumbing.”
I disagree, not evolutionary, pure marketing, could be easily ported to 2K and XP.
“MS knowledge base is more obscure than Ubuntu’s
Not when the users needs to input obscure commands in the X terminal to setup something trivial like a game.”
To set up Rome Total War as a user in 2K, it was necessary to fiddle with cmd.exe and runas. Sudo is a lot easier to handle. But I agree to a certain extent.
You know, the more people like you and tomcat post insulting, ungrammatical crap like this, the more you will entrench in the mind of the FOSS supporter that the biggest market for Windows is among the professionally retarded.
All the other lemmings are doing it.
Anytime somebody tells me “You have no choice” as a reason to buy something, that tells me instantly that any OTHER reason they might offer is total crap.
I have a choice. I choose not to be railroaded.
I use both OS X and Linux. Both allow me to do everything I need. My choice is to be in control of my own system, not to meekly hand it over to a rapacious predator.
In germany, you can get the system builder version of Vista Ultimate for 188 euros. You don’t get any support, but you are allowed to install it on existing hardware.
That is a pretty reasonable price.
I bought Home Basic SB for 50 Euros (equals approx. 70 bucks). That’s reasonable for a gaming system. For serious work (scribus, lyx, openoffice, krita), Internet applications (konqueror, kontact, kopete and multimedia (k3b, Amorok, kaffeine), I still prefer a KDE desktop, if only for security reasons. It’s really not so hard to set up a dual boot system (keep in mind: Linux is free). So 70 dollars for an additional OS don’t hurt that much.
The world is a small place indeed. I used to live in frankfurt too.
I was very much into KDE, but since my current job is mostly .NET software development I am not using it anymore. I will definitely check out KDE4 when it it is finished though. From what I have read, it will be a worthy competitor to Vista and OSX.
Home Basic does not come with encryption. But there are more than enough freeware solutions (e.g. pgp).
I really don’t need enycryption for a system, which is supposed to become a gaming platform. With a cheap hardware NAT firewall solution, it should also be secure.
@tuttle: I hope you enjoyed your stay and had lot of cider. And yes, KDE is doing finet.
“Rock-solid laptop encryption”
Also long available with Macs
No its not the same thing, Windows has had file encryption (like OS X) since Windows 2000 shipped with EFS (Encrypted File System).
Bit Locker is far deeper than simple file encryption, it is capable of doing full partitions and has part of its protection tied to the system hardware.
I may be missing the point here but isn’t bit locker not available in the cheaper versions of Vista as opposed to standard.
I may be missing the point here but isn’t bit locker not? available in the cheaper versions of Vista as opposed to standard.
I believe its available minimally in the business edition, EFS was available on XP Pro and Windows 2000 Pro previously.
Vista Home really does have nothing it seems
Windows will always be a piece of shit because MS makes it so.
I never want to have ‘growing installs” were magically your system fills up
Where you can’t easily do something as another user
Where multiuser is implemented like CRAP
Where you’re restricted do what MS allows you to
Where there are shitloads of bogus files, idiot crap files you don’t know if it’s a virus, worm or some idiot MS crap file.
Where there is an utterly stupid GUI
f–k off MS
Pinnacle Studio (the $500 hardware/software version) will not run on Vista. From what I have read, it will never work with Vista. I run an Athlon XP 2400. It encodes video just fine with the hardware help from Pinnacle.
Edited 2007-01-22 16:46
Pinnacle Studio will of course support Vista (remember it’s still not officially available!), there’s no way Pinnacle would deliberately shrink their audience. I run all flavours of Adobe Soft (right, AFX disables DMW – glass), Fusion, Combustion, Maya, all without a hitch. Vista is VERY compatible.
http://www.avid.com/company/releases/2006/060906_pinnacleStudio10.h…
From a business perspective, speaking of the bottom line, the only reasons I see are:
1. Profit for Microsoft
2. Profit for Microsoft
3. Profit for Microsoft
4. Profit for Microsoft
5. Profit for Microsoft
6. Profit for Microsoft
7. Profit for Microsoft
8. Profit for Microsoft
9. Profit for Microsoft
10. Profit for Microsoft
1,$s/grammer/grammar/g
The only reason that probably is somewhat true is no. 10. The rest is more than lame. And no. 10 is only true when you’re deaf and dumb – well, many are, and so they’ll choose Vista. The rest is going to wake up and is going to take a real operating system
Desktop Search?
Windows has had desktop search and true indexer since NT 4.0 Service Pack 4 Option Pack. And it’s included (but turned off) by default in Win2K, WinXP and Win2K3. Not particularly userfriendly, but Desktop Search has been around in Windows since the last years of the old millenium.
I mean, of what value is it, if not accompanied by a list of reasons why you should NOT get Vista..? And wouldn’t it be deceptive to cap that list at 10..?!
The author really tore into Thom, so badly that Thom hasnt even put up a reply to it. Windows is dead, Linux is the new sheriff in town.
nevermind this comment…
Edited 2007-01-23 08:14
number 11:
because *everyone* uses it. So it can’t be bad. Can it?
number 12:
because Bill said so…