Submitted by Comparisons, conjecture, and controversy. Microsoft’s new operating system is here, but is it ready for primetime? We spent 30 days with Windows Vista to see if it’s worth the leap or if Microsoft should go back to the drawing board.
30 Days with Vista
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The number one question I always ask my family and friends before they dive head-first into a costly upgrade is the same thing I ask my bosses: Why?
It’s an innocent question, but I’m consistently amazed at the utter lack of concrete answers I receive. Most don’t even know what’s new in Vista, but they’re still more than willing to part with several hundred dollars to get their hands on it. It’s truly mind-boggling what people will spend (in money as well as time and energy) for something that might effectively amount to a downgrade in utility.
I’m sure Vista will, eventually, have a number of compelling features for the end user and developers. A good framework has been constructed in many areas. But should my family, friends and co-workers be upgrading to Vista en masse?
No. It’s a viable upgrade path for some, but not Joe Blow, because it honestly doesn’t provide them with anything they don’t already have.
Edited 2007-04-05 19:51
Very well said. I have to agree with you.
I did play around with Vista on my Mac via Bootcamp. I was impressed with the interface. I did however also experience problems with random reboots. This could be because of Bootcamp (still in beta) and I don’t really hold it against it. Most of my problems started after i figured out my wireless connection. The constant Security warnings, windows wouldn’t close annoyed me a bit. I won’t switch from OSX to Vista but for windows users it might be a good upgrade after the Microsoft releases service pack 2.
You’ve hit upon the crux of the matter.
Should Windows users upgrade to Vista? Maybe
Should Windows users upgrade this year? Possibly not.
Let everyone else debug their final release.
I highly doubt that. A boot manager doesn’t do much when the OS is running (I hope).
Unless your OS X rebooted randomly, too?
Let’s face it, an OS that is doing random reboots without being asked is a disgrace. No user of any released, non-testing, OS should *ever* let it get away with something like that.
Unless something is seriously wrong with your hardware.
Let’s face it, an OS that is doing random reboots without being asked is a disgrace. No user of any released, non-testing, OS should *ever* let it get away with something like that.
What amazes me, is the number of people who call us with a Windows problems, and offer to reformat and reinstall. When you ask them why? they say it is one of the first things Microsoft ask them to do when they phone them.
THAT is a disgrace.
No-one should ever have to format and reinstall.
Realy? very good.i see it very happy.
Thaks.
VOB to Zune
http://www.vob-converter.com
Microsoft releases service pack 2.
While I agree with the idea of waiting for the bugs to be ironed out before installing Vista, it is a bad idea for everyone to tell people to wait for SP2. Microsoft are now racing to push out Vista SP1 in June (published deadline) so that SP2 can be ready by December 07 (Speculation). If everyone waits for SP2, then MS will push SP2 out into the market as soon as possible.
If everyone waits for 18 months/until the software is stable, then you have a much more robust piece of advice.
Why?! Because Microsoft said so, that’s why!
As off-the-cuff as that sounds, it appears to be the only reason that everybody around me is springing for a costly OS without any benefits for them!
If this Vista release proves anything, it’s that advertising works. It works very, very well.
Actually, it proves people had very, very good memories of upgrading from Windows 9x to 2k and XP. For most people, that seems to have been an unambiguously good move.
This time, it’s different; and competition with these years-old 2k/XP installs (even ignoring non-Windows alternatives) is very difficult, we should realize.
That’s true. With 9x to XP they were moving from a hack to a multi-user, network-ready, OS (other than the bad default firewall and services policies).
With XP to Vista they’re getting shiny graphics, and UI improvements (search is a UI improvement). Hardly seems worth it until driver support comes up to speed (probably one full year) and even then people would likely wait until they purchase a computer rather than spend hundreds of dollars.
That’s the trouble with getting rich off the low-end market… Those people tend to be pretty stingy so you have to offer them great benefits with each release.
Easy, because people are easily enticed by viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing from their local geek and go-to-guy for all thats relating to IT. They get told by someone that its ‘a good thing’ and many think that “hey, this advice is coming from someone whom I respect on those issues, he must be right”.
Like said previously, its being pushed by word of mouth and viral marketing; tempted by the idea that its so radically visually, underneeth the hood there must be radical changes and thus correct problems they’ve experienced.
The problem is that most of the time, when these people have problems, its something that is unrelated to Windows; its their hardware is crappy because the company who makes hardware do little QA and spend little time testing their driver. That issue is then made worse with software vendors no writing their software to the API specifications given out by Microsoft.
When you look at the larger picture, it doesn’t matter how many times you upgrade, when your computer experience is pretty much dictated by the quality of third party software, drivers and hardware quality, as much as the quality of the operating itself, you’re always going to end up being let down.
The problem is that most of the time, when these people have problems, its something that is unrelated to Windows; its their hardware is crappy because the company who makes hardware do little QA and spend little time testing their driver. That issue is then made worse with software vendors no writing their software to the API specifications given out by Microsoft.
It is a Windows problem though, specifically the way Windows is developed. Linux doesn’t have all the drivers in the world but there are a ton in the kernel and they are of much higher quality than those crappy drivers made by careless hardware companies. Open development and in-tree drivers fix this common Windows problem. I’ve seen plenty of poorly written Windows drivers crash the system but I have yet to see a Linux driver crash Linux. It takes more than a poorly written driver (sometimes developed for a different version of Windows) to accurately claim that a particular piece of hardware is supported.
I thought that this seemed like a pretty reasonable and fair article. However, I think that it’s a shame that the author obviously had stability issues. I am by far and away not a MS fanboy etc. (my mates will happily tell you that I have harped on about linux for years!) but I did, for whatever reason, buy Vista Ultimate for my machine and have not had any stability issues at all.
I *have* had problems installing some apps and, as everybody knows, the early drivers were/still are woefully inadequate. However, as many, including myself, have regularly pointed out, this is not the fault of the OS but the hardware vendors. Of course, this does not detract from the problems that your ‘average joe’ user will encounter, however a fair argument should be levelled across all OSs…
I have to also say that I haven’t had any problems with my iPod (even though iTunes was/is not supported as yet).
Maybe I’ve just been lucky though…
I was expecting this to be an article that would explain that Vista isn’t as bad as some have made it out to be. But it turned out to be one of the most damning Vista reviews I’ve ever read. He tried not to lay it on too thick, and he tried show all the angles, but his experiences are just shockingly horrible. I can’t believe that Vista could be so severely unstable, and I would expect a reviewer to seek support from Microsoft if he were experiencing such serious issues.
I think the takeaway is that Vista is all over the map. Some people have great experiences with it, some could take it or leave it, others have some legitimate gripes, and all too many experience unacceptable problems. If it wasn’t hard enough to see past the hype and animosity surrounding Vista, the prospective buyer has to contend with the wildly different conclusions of seemingly objective reviews. You don’t know if Vista will be the best $300 you’ve ever spent, the worst OS you’ve ever run, or just a waste of money.
Apparently, out on the Vista, your mileage may vary.
I *have* had problems installing some apps and, as everybody knows, the early drivers were/still are woefully inadequate. However, as many, including myself, have regularly pointed out, this is not the fault of the OS but the hardware vendors
They make a new OS that doesnt work with a lot of drivers and then blame others that it doesnt work.
It work just fine in Xp, Microsoft made the changes that caused it not to work in Vista. So don’t blame hardware vendors.
They are forced to rewrite drivers and on top of it they get the blame too.
That’s simply not fair.
The point that I was making is that it is not simply the fault of the OS. If I remember correctly, many, many bits of hardware didn’t work under XP when that was released (e.g. drivers for my old scanner were never available and my old Creative DXR3 card didn’t work for a long time either). These things worked fine in 98. Whilst this is a total pain in the butt, unfortunately, changes are ‘normally’ indicative of some kind of progress.
The fact is that XP is now a mature system, therefore the vendors have had plenty of time to get decent drivers out for it. People are used to that now (quite rightly too).
The other fact is that Vista has been kicking around in Beta etc. for a long time now. To not have drivers for modern hardware is the vendor’s fault in the main (Creative and nVidia – I’m talking about you!).
Can someone please explain the DVD burning issue?
I ordered Home Basic as part of my laptop’s express upgrade. Did I make a mistake?
It sounds to me like I’ll just be hammered with nasty compatablilty problems (I have lots of older software) yet not get ANY of the nice features like Aero, Media Center, DVD Maker, Mobility Center, Backup & Restore, and more?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/cho…
“basically Microsoft has reworked a lot of the core operating system to add copy protection technology for new media formats like HD DVD and Blu-ray disks. Certain high-quality output paths — audio and video — are reserved for protected peripheral devices. Sometimes output quality is artificially degraded; sometimes output is prevented entirely. And Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you’re doing something that it thinks you shouldn’t. If it does, it limits functionality and in extreme cases restarts just the video subsystem.”
taken from: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html
(that article also links to a few other sources on the subject)
[edit – typos]
Edited 2007-04-05 20:52
taken from: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html
(that article also links to a few other sources on the subject)
This has absolutely nothing to do with the issue described in the article. The answer is: Vista uses latest UDF version (2.60) by default, which older OSes can’t read without additional drivers. It’s possible to select previous UDF version (for example 1.50 which is supported by default in Windows 2000) under the Live File System configuration dialog. Dunno why article author didn’t do this, it works fine for me.
Edited 2007-04-05 21:37
Oh thanks for the explanation.
Yeah… I can see Linux is a little behind other OSes (even some of the BSDs and Zeta) when it comes to UDF specification support.
2.50 is the newest that is readable under Linux while 2.0 is the latest thast writable (1 GB Limit though). I’m going to ask the kernel devs when 2.60 read and write support might be available and when the 1 GB barrior might be removed.
The DVD burning issue that the other had was a rather odd one. I’ve burnt quite a few data CD’s with vista and the only time I had a compatibility issue with DVD’s was when I ejected the dvd by pushing the button on the drive after it was finished burning (Vista doesnt automatically eject them for me atleast) and so it didn’t finalize the DVD. This made it an issue to read on my older Windows XP system (granted, the dvd drive on that is a first gen one, so that might be an issue as well). If you select Eject within Explorer, it finalizes the dvd and it read fine. Same with CDs.
Granted, for any type of DVD burning (or cd for that matter) you’re going to want an external application. Avoid Nero like the plague, its a POS on vista and still doesnt work right atleast for me. CheetahDVD works pretty well, no issues with that but sadly (or not sadly, depending on your view of bloat) its not as full featured.
It would be helpful if there was some indication in the post of where the article originated – and that the text is quoted/excerpted.
I think it would be more immediately-clear if there were a brief sentence at the beginning of the post a la “A new Vista review has been posted by HardOCP:” and then a blockquote of the excerpt (or italics or some other visual indication that the text is an excerpt – just to obviously-distinguish it from the writing of the OSAlert editors).
I haven’t joined in the complaint-fests about this in the past, largely because it seemed like so much nit-picky whining from folks with inflated senses of entitlement. But I noticed it the other day when I ended up reading a post on OSAlert – which was a link to/excerpt of a post made by a co-editor on my own site (I do appreciate the link, BTW). But I didn’t notice it was from BeOSAlert until I had read most of the comments here and went back to mouse-over the link (partly my own inattention, I’ll admit, but I did find it sort of funny that I was reading content from my own site on a different site – without being aware of the source).
Anyway, just wanted to stress that it’s meant as a constructive suggestion – and not the typical “I have no inkling of how much work it takes to run the site, so I’m going to assume it’s incredibly easy, make implied insults about your competency, and demand that you adopt my easy-answer solution.”
I helped out a friend buying a new PC.
It had Windows Vista Home Premium installed on it. (I’m a XP user myself most of the time).
Now, before I continue let’s say I have a lot of experience with Microsoft Products. I’m a Microsoft/Citrix engineer for about 7/8 years now so I know all the ins and outs of the OS, mostly Windows 2003 and XP but that shouldn’t make a very big difference.
I was never interested in trying Vista. I did see some screenshots and read the stories and that alone was enough for me to keep running XP.
Well, this became my first experience with my friend’s pc and it wasn’t a very good one. First, like the article says I got bloody annoyed by UAC that popped up everytime. It did even popup when I just wanted to start regular programs that check for an update during startup, crazy.
Eventually I had to edit the registry to disable it!
But that wasn’t all. He had two LCD screens connected to his Vista PC which I wanted to setup, so I go into the control panel and expect to see a display icon with all the options I need, wrong. They seperated every freakin setting! Backgroud, theme, style, display etc. you have 1000 more options than Windows XP had (same with the soundcard and network setup btw) only now it’s seperated in different control panel applets and this, including that very annoying UAC should make Vista more secure and userfriendly???
Man, I wanted to change some things and I needed a lot of time searching for the options to change it, even needed to edit the registry, and these are all things my mom should know how to do if you believe MS?
I like XP, it’s good looking, lightning fast, very stable, but what a joke Vista is. I’ll stick to XP for the next few years I can tell you that.
Edited 2007-04-05 21:31
Actually from what I saw they don’t have 1000 more options, they have basically the same options, but they are all split up to make it LOOK like they have more options.
They seriously screwed with everything, and yet it’s not really all that more functional than XP.
For example, they changed Add / Remove programs which is probably the most common Control Panel applet for us to use, and now it’s under “Programs and Features” (if you switch to Classic View, which obviously isn’t very ‘classic’)
The really funny thing is, in comparison, this is what most people have complained about Gnome, is that the control center applets are becoming too great in number, and that they need to merge a lot of them. Vista went the opposite direction and split everything up even more than before.
Yeah that’s exactly what I meant. They made it so that you need to click 5 times to reach the same goal where in XP you had to click only 1 or 2 times. It’s crazy.
That’s nothing, try after creating another user account to then create a folder within the Program Files directory.
It literally prompts you twice for the password and twice for no real reason. That’s four prompts to create a folder.
To explain this in more detail, when you right click in Program files and select “New -> Folder” It’ll prompt you if you really want to do it, asking “Continue / Cancel” then it’ll prompt you for your Administrator password. Then it’ll have a “New Folder” which has text input to change the name. Once you change the name, then it asks again “Continue / Cancel” then prompts you for the Administrator password a second time! That’s just plain crazy.
No. You click once in XP / W2K and the start menu opens. You click twice and the systems / programs / etc folder opens. I cannot think of anything that would even work with 3 clicks in XP.
Not because it is the worst, but i happen to use it often in practice (classic theme XP). Go into the HD setup in XP. You would never find it with sane reasoning, but if you know where it is and you wanna change something, say partitioning, etc… how many clicks is that – like 67..? XP is only “easy” because we are so familiar with it after 8 years. It seems “natural” to do things XP-way, I think.
Actually, In windows XP, to get to the drive partition manager, something that you don’t want easily exposed to the naiive user, requires 3 single-clicks and 2 double-clicks.
“It did even popup when I just wanted to start regular programs that check for an update during startup, crazy. Eventually I had to edit the registry to disable it!’
No need to edit the registry, just goto Control Panel > Users and click the Turn User Access Control on/off.
“They seperated every freakin setting! Backgroud, theme, style, display etc. you have 1000 more options than Windows XP had (same with the soundcard and network setup btw) only now it’s seperated in different control panel applets and this, including that very annoying UAC should make Vista more secure and userfriendly???”
Click the Classic View link in the left pane of the Control Panel. Whew, that was hard work. I need a drink of water after working up that sweat.
For a 7/8 year Citrix Admin, you certainly ar rather clueless. Then again, we can be anyone we want to be on the internet since there is little or no way of verifying facts such as this. I’d wager that many people lie about things like this just to make them sound more credible. If you’re a Citrix Admin, I’m the fricking Pope…kiss my ring fool.
Now, before somebody rips my head off, I know I’m being pedantic but since when does Windows run on Sparc or PPC? The last time I checked, I think there was a version of NT for the DEC Alpha and support for Windows Mobile on the Arm, right?
NT4 also ran on the MIPS IIRC.
That IS one of the things I like about the Linux/BSD world. Everything DOES NOT revolve around x86, even if it is the most prevalent port.
It’s kind of similar to how people here in America think we ARE the world. Why we even have a World Series of baseball!
NT 3.51 supported architectures are x86, Alpha, MIPS, PPC, SPARC, Clipper.
NT4: x86, Alpha, MIPS, PPC.
err.. not to troll, but I am old enough to have grown up with the early DOS generation. And I tell you this: at the time is was the “fashion” NOONE ever serious used/advoced NT – they looked at you with a mild smile of pity and said that NT really only starts with 4.0 – there was x64 and PPC of that – and since Windows-PPC was factually inexistant by numbers, NT is in fact x86 for all it’s worth. The argument is about as mute as it is relating to whether BeOS is dead – it is, but you will always find someone who claims it is not because they happen to be the last survivng user. “NT = x86” But yeah, the point is taken.
Um NT3.51 was pretty usable compared to the junk that was the other windows (3.1 etc), I was using it for CAD work, chip design etc, 16MB of ram, 1G HD, pretty rock solid and I certainly advocated for it rather than have a real Unix box. The web still barely existed then so it was also a really small OS that just worked. Things changed mightily when MS converged on NT for all users though and it just grew & grew into the much loved or hated monster it is today. Still got my 3.1 NT CDs too with the 4 platforms on it.
Also isn’t NT PPC inside the XBox or is that another OS?
err not to troll, but the last surviving BeOS users are still here too using our relatively always small OS.
Don’t forget other platforms like 68k (ok, fine it’s pretty much dead) but still, really besides the few mentioned already, Windows really doesn’t run on a whole lot.
Just check out Debian and NetBSD to see how many architectures are out there. They’ll run on pretty much anything.
Vista = P.O.S.
I would rather be kicked in the face than to buy any Microfart product.
By the way, is it true that Paul Thurrott gets an erection whenever a new version of Winblows is released? And that his ultimate dream in life is to perform fellatio on his prophet, Billy Goates?
I hate having to freaking hunt around the control panel for options that used to be obviously placed before. Why did they move everything around. Its extremely counter productive and I think they were trying to do what OSX did with their control panel without actually thinking about what Apple did with the control panel.
I have been using Vista since the beta and I must honestly though grudgingly say that I have had no issues with stability, and I tried really hard to crash Vista to see if they went as far as making th BSoD as pretty as the rest of the UI. Silly, but I had to try. Anyway, I couldn’t get the darn thing to crash and I barely shut it down at all and only logoff the thing on the weekends (I’m using it as my primary test machine at work). Its been pretty stable. I did have to turn off UAC to get certain software to behave. I’m a Linux user and I wouldn’t ever install Vista on my home machine, but stability is something I haven’t found to be an issue with the OS. Performance on the other hand is awful, even the UI is choppy and jerky and this is on a fairly new midrange system with decent specs. We rolled out a couple of Vista machines to users so that they can test and we showed them the flip3d thing and the first thing one user said was ‘what else does it do?’, and then they asked me if it could be turned off. I suggested they don’t use it. It is fairly useless and not well thought out. It should have been part of some MS plus pack or something cause its jut really a toy. They should have just bitten the bullet and copied Expose, which is actually usable.
Edited 2007-04-05 23:20
I will def. agree that the Flip3D is pretty much useless for all purposes. Its a graphical upgrade of Alt+Tab for people who can’t figure out the way alt+tab works in the first place. Expose is a much more elegant solution even if it does start to get…inelegant on multiple monitors.
For the poor performance, have you updated to the latest drivers? Most of the major chipsets and graphics cards have had updates at this point which have done a pretty decent job in equalizing performance compared to XP, unless you’re 3D card is just too slow (or lacks sufficient memory) for aero. If you disable that, performance is pretty decent even on older systems.
What’s wrong with Expose on multiple monitors? I suppose you have to actually look at both monitors, but I’d prefer that to making the windows that much smaller on one monitor (besides, it’d be awfully hard for it to predict which monitor I’m looking at).
Vista certainly sucks less than some people think of it, but on the other hand there isn’t much new stuff to migrate from Windows XP or even Windows 2000. So it certainly sucks a lot for Microsoft.
>On two separate computers I had major stability problems which resulted in loss of data. This is an unforgivable sin.
Just blame the people who developed the crappy drivers. You can have this experience everywhere in Linux, *BSD and of course Windows. Windows is far behind the mentioned opensource systems, but there is a lot of FUD and urband legend out there. So think different (no, no crappy Apple) and stop suck most.
Just blame the people who developed the crappy drivers. You can have this experience everywhere in Linux, *BSD and of course Windows. Windows is far behind the mentioned opensource systems, but there is a lot of FUD and urband legend out there. So think different (no, no crappy Apple) and stop suck most.
I don’t know about that. I have installed Linux on various machines and have yet to have Linux crash because of a driver. Windows seems to have the most problems with drivers because so many different people and companies write the drivers. Badly written and unsafe drivers don’t exist in Linus’ tree and 3rd party drivers are loaded as modules and generally do not affect system stability.
Try logging in to your windows xp home network and see what fun happens. First have to download and install Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) protocol for the xp machines then disable the Norton security that came on my HP laptop then access the networking from control panel then network map a few times to finally and hopefully “see” the other computer. Everytime I have to it is a cussing session. What a pain. Ah, the joy of putting my wife’s vista laptop back in the bag and sitting down to my iMac! Sheesh
FTA:
It’s a family of operating systems that run on just about any hardware, making computing affordable for almost everyone.
This is total BS. The truth is just the opposite.
By making Windows run only on the x86 architecture, Microsoft has brought their monoculture to the computer hardware as well. This means less competition, which in turn means higher prices. It also means less innovation.
In an “ideal world”, where most software could run on any architecture, we would have different archs competing and innovating on a level playground. I’m sure that this would mean a world with much more advanced and cheaper computers.
A computer in every home – much like Ford putting a model-T in every garage.
Hmmm… I didn’t know that Microsoft makes computers too. You learn something new everyday…
And like Ford, there are also some complaints about Microsoft leveraging its monopoly power to stifle innovation, which we’re all familiar with.
I wonder what kind of cars we would be driving today if we had a monopoly like Microsoft in the car industry too…
And finally, the prices of Vista are not cheap by any means or even affordable to some. Especially the Ultimate edition is ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the high system requirements, which also mean higher prices…
Edited 2007-04-06 00:33
By making Windows run only on the x86 architecture, Microsoft has brought their monoculture to the computer hardware as well. This means less competition, which in turn means higher prices. It also means less innovation.
Really? Looking around, I can buy x86 hardware from a huge number of vendors. How is competition being hurt?
In an “ideal world”, where most software could run on any architecture, we would have different archs competing and innovating on a level playground. I’m sure that this would mean a world with much more advanced and cheaper computers.
It’s not much of a stretch to figure out why that hasn’t happened. People like to standardize on the same functional hardware in order to run the same software, use the same devices, etc. Having different archs would mean much greater incompatibility, less choice due to fragmentation of the market, and higher costs. Frankly, I wouldn’t care for that kind of future.
Hmmm… I didn’t know that Microsoft makes computers too. You learn something new everyday…
Given that MS operating systems are on 95% of the world’s desktop computers, that’s a distinction without a difference.
I wonder what kind of cars we would be driving today if we had a monopoly like Microsoft in the car industry too…
Oh, God. Not another “If MS built cars” thread.
And finally, the prices of Vista are not cheap by any means or even affordable to some. Especially the Ultimate edition is ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the high system requirements, which also mean higher prices…
Are you talking about retail prices? Um, really, don’t kid yourself: Nobody pays retail. The overwhelming number of people get an OS when they buy a new computer — and the cost of an OS bundled with a Dell or Gateway IBM or whatever isn’t the same as retail. I would hardly call the prices “ridiculously expensive”.
Really? Looking around, I can buy x86 hardware from a huge number of vendors. How is competition being hurt?
Well competition is hurt not directly through price but through innovation instead. Thanks to this innovation we could get better computers for the same money.
It’s not much of a stretch to figure out why that hasn’t happened. People like to standardize on the same functional hardware in order to run the same software, use the same devices, etc. Having different archs would mean much greater incompatibility, less choice due to fragmentation of the market, and higher costs. Frankly, I wouldn’t care for that kind of future.
I admit, you have a point in there. But look at Debian which runs on 11 arches. Admittedly its development goes slowly but that’s because these more “exotic” arches don’t have many users (and therefore lack developers too).
Are you talking about retail prices? Um, really, don’t kid yourself: Nobody pays retail. The overwhelming number of people get an OS when they buy a new computer — and the cost of an OS bundled with a Dell or Gateway IBM or whatever isn’t the same as retail. I would hardly call the prices “ridiculously expensive”.
Yes, but the price of Windows and especially the higher resource usage of Vista still adds to the final price of a new PC. My point is that Microsoft doesn’t make computers more affordable.
Please, not this *again*. The price of Windows Vista for an OEM like Dell or HP/Compaq sits at around $10-$15 per unit shipped – its bugger all in the grand scheme of things.
The commoditisation of hardware made computers more accessible as all those compete on a level playing field with a standardised architecture which everything is based off – it could have been SPARC but Sun never had the drive to turn it into something as ubiquious as x86.
Microsoft made this hardware accessible in the form of providing a standard operating system that could run on pretty much x86 machine out of the box – gone the strong relationship between the hardware vendor and the operating system loaded on. Windows could have been replaced then by any number of operating systems, the alternatives however were too resource hungry or the vendors couldn’t be bothered investing the necessary money to make it work.
Today, you can pretty much replace Windows with Linux or any other operating system today; what is holding it back isn’t Microsoft but hardware companies who refuse to disclose their hardware specifications to operating system vendors such as Red Hat, Novell, and Sun Microsystems.
Their refusal, along with vendors like Adobe, Quicken and MYOB refusal to provide their software on alternative operating systems, further entrench Windows on the desktop – now and in the future.
If I had my time over again, the first thing I would made sure was that this laptop had a Realtek network and wireless card rather than the rubbish that was bundled with it, and Intels complete refusal to provide the necessary hardware specifications to Sun so that drivers can be written to support it.
If I had my time over again, the first thing I would made sure was that this laptop had a Realtek network and wireless card rather than the rubbish that was bundled with it, and Intels complete refusal to provide the necessary hardware specifications to Sun so that drivers can be written to support it.
Are you sure about that for Intel hardware? They have open source drivers for all their wireless cards and built-in chipsets that I’ve ever seen. Though the firmware is still closed.
And yet they haven’t provided a single driver for OpenSolaris yet, even with this ‘closer relationship’ which they announced not too long ago.
If Intel made the specifications available to Sun and provided the necessary support to write a driver for the Intel 3945 chip set, Sun would have already done it.
It pretty much speaks volumes to me about Intel lack of commitment; oh, and Intel didn’t support linux out of the goodness of their own heart, Intel fought tooth and nail the whole way – and now they’re doing the same with OpenSolaris; promising to work with Sun, and yet, providing very little in the way of output in terms of improved hardware support for OpenSolaris.
According to this post http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=22079
It should be coming soon. The thing is, the driver for Linux at http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net IS open sourced, so why couldn’t they just take the source code there and try to port it over to OpenSolaris? Well, that’s more than likely what they ARE doing. Which was my point. I wouldn’t expect Intel themselves to work on it, though I think for Linux they actually are. I have watched a video of things to come in X.org 7.3 that was presented by a guy working for Intel and they do directly code for the Intel graphics chips for X.org.
It should be coming soon. The thing is, the driver for Linux at http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net IS open sourced, so why couldn’t they just take the source code there and try to port it over to OpenSolaris? Well, that’s more than likely what they ARE doing.
They can’t, because its licenced under the GPL.
Which was my point. I wouldn’t expect Intel themselves to work on it, though I think for Linux they actually are. I have watched a video of things to come in X.org 7.3 that was presented by a guy working for Intel and they do directly code for the Intel graphics chips for X.org.
Excuse me, but SUN have a formal arrangement with Intel; and quite frankly, Sun has been getting a raw deal from both AMD and Intel; if it isn’t AMD not doing something about the atrocious quality of ATI drivers, its Intel getting all cuddly with Sun, and yet, doing nothing in regards to providing drivers for their products for the OpenSolaris platform.
Please, not this *again*. The price of Windows Vista for an OEM like Dell or HP/Compaq sits at around $10-$15 per unit shipped – its bugger all in the grand scheme of things.
Even though Windows does not make the price per unit higher, it does make computing generally more expensive via the vicious upgrade cycle: “need to” to upgrade your Windows (and shell out more money) –> “need to” upgrade your software (shell out more money) –> “need to” upgrade your hardware (shell out even more money)… and so on.
Actually, if Linux would become the dominant OS we might see the price per unit go higher due to less units sold, as there would be less need for hardware upgrades. However computing in general would become cheaper for the same reason.
And once *again*, I’m sure that the exceptionally high system requirements of Vista do make computers more expensive. For me the only believable explanation for these system requirements is that Microsoft *artificially* made them higher in order to drive people buy new hardware. This is no way to make computers more affordable.
The fact is that the level of performance we have now even in the cheapest PCs is enough for, say 80% of computer users for many years to come, but only if they jump off Microsoft’s bandwagon.
Microsoft made this hardware accessible in the form of providing a standard operating system that could run on pretty much x86 machine out of the box – gone the strong relationship between the hardware vendor and the operating system loaded on.
Initially yes, you are right. We can give Microsoft credit on this.
Windows could have been replaced then by any number of operating systems, the alternatives however were too resource hungry or the vendors couldn’t be bothered investing the necessary money to make it work.
Yes, like OS/2 which was way more advanced than Windows at the time.
Today, you can pretty much replace Windows with Linux or any other operating system today; what is holding it back isn’t Microsoft
No, this is where the initial benefit of Windows (OS for the masses) strikes back but that’s mainly because of Microsoft’s business practices to keep this dominance.
but hardware companies who refuse to disclose their hardware specifications to operating system vendors such as Red Hat, Novell, and Sun Microsystems.
This is true but Microsoft might have something to do with this…
Their refusal, along with vendors like Adobe, Quicken and MYOB refusal to provide their software on alternative operating systems, further entrench Windows on the desktop – now and in the future.
Yes, you are right about this.
All in all, Vista has brought us to a turning point, where we must finally reconsider what is truly beneficial to the world of computing, today and in the future.
Edited 2007-04-06 13:29
Well, the question should be that from how many can you buy non-x86 hardware that Windows will run on ?
Well, some of us don’t buy “new computer”s ever, only exception being laptops. We still can get oem versions of Windows, no problem, I still don’t find it cheap. You have to think about it relatively, like, how much percent of yout monthly income is a vista ultimate oem ? For me, that’s exactly 1/4 (central europe prices) and I don’t earn that bad (also relatively speaking).
By making Windows run only on the x86 architecture, Microsoft has brought their monoculture to the computer hardware as well. This means less competition, which in turn means higher prices. It also means less innovation.
It appears to have brought hardware prices down actually.
In an “ideal world”, where most software could run on any architecture, we would have different archs competing and innovating on a level playground. I’m sure that this would mean a world with much more advanced and cheaper computers.
We had that in the past and things were not cheaper. In fact prices were high and vendor lockin was rampant. It also increases the cost of software development porting to multiple platforms.
If you look at the economics of any industry there is consolidation around a standard and generally (monopolies being the exception) prices come down when product become commodities with standardization.
And finally, the prices of Vista are not cheap by any means or even affordable to some. Especially the Ultimate edition is ridiculously expensive. Not to mention the high system requirements, which also mean higher prices…
That has more to do with MS’s business practices than anything happening in the x86 commodity market.
We had that in the past and things were not cheaper. In fact prices were high and vendor lockin was rampant. It also increases the cost of software development porting to multiple platforms.
Yes but I was talking about an “ideal world” not the past. In that ideal world the majority of software would be FLOSS (of course
and there would be no verdor lock-in like we have even now.
If you look at the economics of any industry there is consolidation around a standard and generally (monopolies being the exception) prices come down when product become commodities with standardization.
I’m not an expert in economics, but I would believe that that is more true in well established industries. In the fast evolving computer industry too much standardization has potential to slow development. This is why Linux doesn’t have a stable kernel API, for example.
Edited 2007-04-06 02:24
read this article….from bbc…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4715612.stm
====
“I found out that the US military use Windows,” said Mr McKinnon in that BBC interview. “And having realised this, I assumed it would probably be an easy hack if they hadn’t secured it properly.
The US government actually doesn’t run Vista, they run previous versions of Windows. And if you properly follow the NSA’s guides to locking down Windows, its extremely secure. Its when its inproperly patched, locked down (hardware and software) that it becomes an issue. The same with any OS.
Fanboy knee-jerk reactions to a media article that really doesnt describe anything but a hackers attempt for UFO info and anti-us info doesnt really describe why you shouldnt use windows.
Did you read the article????
“The US government alleges that between February 2001 and March 2002, the 40-year-old computer enthusiast from north London hacked into dozens of US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defense computers, as well as 16 Nasa computers.”
“The US government also says Mr McKinnon once took down an entire network of 2,000 US Army computers. His goal, they claim, was to access classified information.”
Yes, I read the article. Just like I’ve read previous ones on this case since its been going on for years. However, the article doesn’t state that its windows computers, servers, etc; let alone vista.
The fact of the matter is that this was an extremely poor review by [H]ardOCP. If you compare to their previous Ubuntu one, where the author went out of his way to fix issues and then look at how he handled things it vista, it just smacks at a poor attempt to spin. That might not have really been his intent, but even long time readers on the site have called him out (the forum thread was over 8 pages long within 12hrs of posting with mostly negative comments about the article.)
Most of the issues he experienced weren’t a fault of Microsoft or more specifically Vista, but rather older hardware, software, and drivers that might or might not have really been compatible with the OS. The fact that he neither attempted to track down fixes (like he did with Ubuntu), or even applied the standard compatibility modes (which actually seem to work far better in Vista than with XP in my experience) just left a sour taste.
The fact that the editor has now left a rather harsh disclaimer disagreeing with the author at the end of the review should state something as well.
Well, the guy actually formatted his hard drive and didn’t mention having Norton anything installed, so he doesn’t appear to be totally clueless, unlike most of the others who have reviewed Vista thus far. So I’d say it was a pretty accurate representation of what one might expect when installing a copy of Vista on existing machines.
The fact of the matter is that this was an extremely poor review by [H]ardOCP
In your opinion
If you compare to their previous Ubuntu one, where the author went out of his way to fix issues and then look at how he handled things it vista, it just smacks at a poor attempt to spin
The author actually answered this point in the forum that you claim to have read. With linux, there are lots of avenues of attack for solutions to drivers etc. In Vista, there is one solution: You go to the manufacturers website and it says ‘no Vista driver available’. Now you are at a dead-end, the chance that there is a community written driver is <%1 for modern hardware.
the forum thread was over 8 pages long within 12hrs of posting with mostly negative comments about the article
I was reading the thread, and I saw a balance of people who agreed with the author and people who didn’t (talk about spin).
Most of the issues he experienced weren’t a fault of Microsoft or more specifically Vista,
How the hell do you know that? The author tested on 2 different machines and found identical problems in Vista that weren’t present in XP. These problems match my own experiences of Vista (namely the random reboots, and cpu lockups). Did you remote debug the author’s machine just at the point that it randomly rebooted?
but rather older hardware, software, and drivers that might or might not have really been compatible with the OS
By the sound of it, the author had a pretty modern system composed of recent bits of hardware.
far better in Vista than with XP in my experience
This is exactly the author’s point. People’s milage with Vista varies dramatically. And that is not acceptable for the world’s biggest OS. If you’re going to spend lb500 on a piece of software, it had better work damn well.
The fact that the editor has now left a rather harsh disclaimer disagreeing with the author at the end of the review should state something as well.
I wouldn’t read too much into that. I’m sure that [H]ard Forum don’t want to overly annoy MS or their PR department, a simple disclaimer from the editor-in-chief is a good way to make a token gesture to an annoyed MS PR rep.
True, there’s not very likely to be a community driver. However, I’m not just harping on driver issues. the random lockups, crashes, etc. He never took the time to trace down what might be causing it. Vista is harder on your hardware than XP is, in part because its stressing both the CPU, and GPU constantly where XP didnt touch the GPU for normal operations.
Hardly a balance. Most of the comments expressed either a good experience with vista, or else comparable to XP at its launch (which is what most people seem to be missing). Also, when I read the thread, it mostly WAS negative. I work for a living, so I cant sit online following each and every post in a thread most days. I admit, I might have missed some but from the point when I stopped following it, it was mostly negative.
Two different machines both running graphics cards, and one an NVIDIA chipset. I sell vista machines, I work on them daily at my store. The prime place we’ve had issues with machines have been NVIDIA related. Their graphics drivers were shit at release, and still mostly are considering the amount of features disabled. Thats not Microsoft’s fault. Thats NVIDIA’s. Most stability problems in Windows either stem from spyware/adware, registry problems (much less frequent than it used to be) or driver issues. And, last time I checked, Microsoft doesn’t make the majority of drivers for the hardware it runs on.
And it does work pretty well, for an OS thats been out now three months. Especially on hardware its certified on. Especially when the companies who sat on their thumbs for years finally put out polished, final drivers. But that wasn’t the tone of the author, he downright stated that while your experience will vary, its a lemon. Its not a lemon, at all. Its an OS that was rushed because the media and users wanted it out there. So did Microsoft’s investors, staff, etc. That doesn’t excuse other companies from writing their OWN drivers to make a system use able when they had years of lead time, and many months of release candidates and betas.
[H]ardOCP has rarely given a damn what people think about them as they’ve proved on a number of occasions. Microsoft didnt even provide the review copy for this article, so they had nothing to lose by sugar coating it. The editor put on the disclaimer because the author went off half-cocked with a sensationalist closing section for the slashdoting, digging, etc. that he knew would come.
Is Vista perfect? Hell no, is it pretty damn good for a Microsoft OS thats been out for less than a quarter? Yes, in fact, I’d say its their best consumer/business line release they’ve done. However, everyone loves to jump on Microsoft for the slightest sign of weakness or mistake, which is all most of the reviews are doing. Its not ME, it’s not another BOB. Get over it
Mac does it for me on the Internet and average work, w/zero system crashes, and no corruption or lost data since OSX 10.2 when I started using it. Max uptime, minimum hassle, zero maintenance. What more could I ask. Oh, yeah, Boot Camp, where XP Pro just humms.
NT4, then Win 2000, and now XP Pro SP2 do 3D solids CAD and it is stable as long as I keep it off the Internet. I did NOT upgrade to XP Pro until SP 2.0, though, and that kept me from pulling my hair out compared to some friends.
Never buy the first year’s model, or you could get a Pinto. For me to leave XP Pro, Microsoft is going to have to deliver one hell of a solid ViSTA OS. If they can’t, I’ll stay on XP Pro at least until 2010 or when I move to a Unix box for 3D CAD.
Your CAD software doesn’t have a Unix version? Or can you just not get the Unix version to work on Mac?
Seems he forgot about DX10 not being the same thing as DX9 and not necessarily backwards compatible.
I wonder if the following passage in the article couldn’t be a consequence of the Content Protection as described on http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html :
“The second was the fact that this XviD clip, which played fine as a file, varied from extremely soft to extremely loud. I didn’t discover that little tidbit until we tried to use the burned DVD on a 5.1 stereo speaker system. We (including a few of my close friends) kept turning the volume up as the audio got softer and softer, and then, bam, we were deafened, and the process would start over again.”
Content filtering, changing system settings, restart the process. If this is true, then I wonder how long it’ll take before someone sues for getting ear damage.
Doesn’t happen on my system and Vista shouldn’t cause DRM related issues unless the contents been created, and flagged as DRM’d with certain restrictions. I’m fairly sure that Xvid doesnt have the capability built into it for that level of restriction. More likely, and here we go again, it was a driver level issue.
I’ve yet to have an issue with volume on my home vista system (Realtek integrated audio) nor have I heard any issues like that from a friend and my computer is the only DVD, tv, & downloaded content player in my apartment
“To not have drivers for modern hardware is the vendor’s fault in the main (Creative and nVidia – I’m talking about you!).”
While that may be true, it may also be the case that the way MS designed its OS this time around makes it very hard for them to release good drivers for the hardware in time.
and loving every minute of it!
Tested vista on a Sempron 3100+ 64 bit, 1GB RAM DDR400, Radeon X1950 Pro AGP, Sound Blaster Live, and a 120GB IDE 7200 rpm HDD, and that’s my impression:
– It eats about 200MB more than XP on the same machine to do the same thing, although performance is similar (maybe a bit slower than XP).
– It has poor driver support : my sound blaster live doesn’t sound at all in vista, while it had support out of the box with XP.
– Pathetic OpenGL performance (at least with catalyst 7.2 and a radeon x1950 pro). Tried doom3 and it’s unusuable, while runs great on the same machine in XP (1280×1024 4x AA and 60 fps).
– I did not have stability issues though.
– Couldn’t install my fauvorite antispyware program from AVG.
I had a laptop in the store with Vista Premium blue screen on a laptop with [IRQ not equal or less] the same exact error going back to Windows NT 4.0 Server lineup. This hard fault is caused by a invalid driver that accessed the HAL in the kernel of the OS.
In my opinion the entire Vista lineup would be ok however get rid of the lockdown on the entire operating system and the registration. I can understand being concerned about having a copied version but this has went to far. They need to focus on the driver problems and making it work right with the hardware/software. I have to give them some credit for making the user interface (gui) look better but it still needs work.
I have always liked to test the newest things becauase of my work as PC/MAc technician.
But after having Vista installed for about one month, i throwed it out again and installed XP. Vista does not work as expected and i hope it will be better with SP1.