Submitted by Windows Vista is everyone’s favorite tech punching bag, and not without reason. But the reviled operating system has some amazing potential and with some tweaks and a few utilities, you can do what Redmond didn’t: make Vista great.
Making Vista Great Part 1: Fix Windows Explorer
About The Author
Adam Scheinberg
Technology Executive o Web Developer o Father o Foodie o Music Snob o OS enthusiast
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I see two options:
1. instead of tweaking a proprietary system to behave as someone wants, I’d prefer setting up a fully configurable environment in a FOSS OS…
2. Or, if people is happy with their XP, why change it?
First, because XP is being phased out, gradually but surely. Like it or not, your XP downgrade option won’t stick around forever. Either get used to Vista or sit and wait for Windows 7, if you want to use Windows that is. This naturally doesn’t apply to business environments, where the individual rarely gets a choice in what os they get to use and how it behaves.
As for setting up a foss os, will you guys give it up? Average user doesn’t want foss. Further, they don’t care. They want well-known names and full vendor support they can call and complain to when something’s broken, not fifty forums to search in hopes of finding an answer they can understand. Why must every discussion about a windows article always have to set you guys off about foss? Give it a rest.
“full vendor support they can call and complain to when something’s broken”
I don’t want to dissent any other part of your comment. But can you please stop telling this myth?!
Seriously!
The only help with Windows the ordinary end user gets is from his Windows-knowing peers. Name me one hotline where you would call and complain if your system starts to crash, programs don’t work anymore or any other typical mess, AND get a satisfying answer to solve your problem.
Every time Windows gets broken the only real “solution” most people have is a reinstall, while also a disturbingly big portion of them just arrange themselves with the problem. Perhaps they are lucky to know somebody who can fix it, but calling the vendor isn’t fixing it for them at all.
your isp helpdesk for internet trouble, most likely they support osx/windows but not your linux distro.
and for the dutch microsoft support : http://support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support?LN=nl
there is a hotline you could call, there is usenet support and some other stuff.
feel free to say windows is crap, their helpdesk sucks or people have trouble pinpointing the nature of their problems. but windows is fully supported by all hardware manufacturers. with nearly all products you have phone support. you are just not part of the target audience.
Good thing there’s no usenet support for FOSS software…
What color is the sky in your world? Good luck getting support from any of the numerous hardware manufacturers when your shiny new equipment does not work or there’s a bug in their driver (3rd party drivers are always of the “highest” quality in Windows, arent they). You’ll be lucky if they even have a support forum or an updated driver.
I”m not saying FOSS is any better (or worse) but saying Windows is fully vendor supported is, quite frankly, bull.
Creative screw all users!
http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soun…
You mean like this
Exactly, but everyone knows Creative hasn’t had a good product or been relevant since AWE32.
same as you, blue. i never had any trouble getting support for windows problems (ok, i run osx and haven’t run windows for a few years).
please note i said windows support, and nothing more than that. i never said all companies have high quality support or drivers. but the 3rd party drivers are a lot better than the foss drivers (i’m still waiting for working 3d video card drivers for my hardware).
but could you please point out a hardware manufacturer who does not support windows? really, humor me. intel? amd? nvidia? hp? iiyama? apc? even apple supports windows. maybe you should ask theo de raadt about how much companies support foss.
it’s really sad people are not capable of realizing 90+% of the people run windows in this world. it’s not the way i want it either, but at least i understand it.
No, you said “fully supported by all hardware manufacturers” which is not the same as just supported, more or less well, by most hardware manufacturers.
Yet, whenever someone has an unstable Windows system people are quick to blame the 3rd party drivers. I recall there being a lot of complaints about the stability of nVidia and ATI drivers, for one.
I agree. Unless one happens to be from multi-billion dollar mega corporation – its delusional to think that Microsoft (or infact any software company) actually gives a toss about a lowly end user and their problems with Windows. Unless those with the dollars are complaining – one has Buckley’s chance of getting problems fixed.
“I don’t want to dissent any other part of your comment. But can you please stop telling this myth?”
Businesses want support, and are willing to pay for it. The old saying still holds: Nobody ever got fired for buying MS (used to be ibm).
Every retail version of Windows comes with 2 free incidents. Just because people don’t use them doesn’t mean they are not there.
“Every time Windows gets broken the only real “solution” most people have is a reinstall”
Theres a myth YOU should stop telling, That hasn’t been the case since Windows ME. NT based systems just don’t act that way, especially XP or Vista. They are much more stable. They also don’t need to be reinstalled every 6 months either.
It’s not 1998 anymore.
I hate to break it to you buddy, but linux users get over 2 billion free support calls just via a different channel.
And linux doesn’t play up at all except for third party drivers like windows.
So like windows, if your drivers are borked then you’re up the creek with no paddle, it doesn’t matter what OS you use!
At least with linux if it’s super important, you can employ someone relatively cheaply just to fix your issue, I’ve not had the same luxury from windows!
wtf? I wasn’t talking about Linux, I was addressing a point about Windows support. Try reading. The support options for Linux is irrelevant to my point. Oh, and what channel would that be? I don’t see any support numbers for Debian or FreeBSD.
Yeah right, whatever. I use them both, and I have had problems with both and fixed them both. Linux isn’t perfect. All OS’s suck, they all just suck differently. I’ve had X die, I’ve had dependency issues, I’ve had bugs. Grow up.
uh, no. if your drivers are “borked” fix them. With Windows you can use system restore, the repair console, or safemode. With Linux you can boot to single user mode and fix them. If your first reaction is to reinstall the OS because a driver is screwed up, then you don’t know what you are doing.
I’m not sure what you mean, there are lots of places, both cheap and expensive, to get a Windows box fixed. That sort of support for Linux does not exist.
Edited 2008-10-16 15:24 UTC
Everywhere I have ever lived (albeit that has all been fairly large cities) there are small computer shops in the area, and independent computer repair guys in the phone book, and both deal exclusively with windows.
For OSX, there is the Genius Bar in the apple stores, and the odd independent licensed reseller that will help you out. Both will be in the phone book.
For linux, there is nothing but online forums (which exist for both osx and windows as well), business support licenses (which also exist for everyone), and a do-it-yourself attitude.
If you are unskilled, have no job, or are in the extreme minority of people who actually enjoy doing this, spending hours and hours of your life fixing your own problems is not so much of a problem. For the other 99% of the world, there are plenty of options available to them that will take way less time then becoming a unix expert.
“If you are unskilled, have no job, or are in the extreme minority of people who actually enjoy doing this, spending hours and hours of your life fixing your own problems is not so much of a problem. For the other 99% of the world, there are plenty of options available to them that will take way less time then becoming a unix expert.”
– google_ninja
Attitudes like this are what prevent FOSS from taking off. There is some work involved in setting up but in the long run, I have found that once set up, linux gives me far less problems than windows does it it never gives me that annoyed/pissed off feeling that MS products give me for some reason.
To set up ubuntu (to be fully functional) on my somewhat exotic (as x86 hardware goes) iMac, it took me 2 hours to find drivers/read through forums and 15 mins to actually do the set up. For the future, I saved the drivers I needed and know their names (to find updated versions if necessary) and can get the post install set up (additional drivers) in about 20 mins incl. getting updated drivers. Thats not bad for a system that has never crashed on me in years (I have had multiple machines with many distros of linux, all trouble free for about 6? years in a row). I’m not saying that a *nix illiterate will be able to do this but if they get a friend to set up, they’ll be set for a long trouble free time with their computer.
P.S – Message to the faint hearted – Feel free to disagree with me because this is just my opinion and please don’t take this personally
Edited 2008-10-16 01:44 UTC
I recently did a hardy install on my new laptop (which is not exotic at all, an hp pavilion dv7). Getting everything working to a level of satisfaction took about two full weekends. I am a total geek, professional developer, and have been using linux about as long as you have.
By contrast, Vista x64 on the same machine took about half an hour, performs about as well (some things better, others worse) and crashes significantly less (I use compiz on ubuntu, which accounts for most of the crashes).
I do this because I love linux and enjoy the time I spend learning. But at the same time, most people I know find the amount of work and learning you have to put in to use windows, and that is not even the same ballpark as linux.
My point was (and is) that normal people with a life and a job will pay so that they dont have to dedicate a portion of their lives to becoming computer geeks. Its not even a decision.
Thats odd, I’ve never had such setup problems with linux before and I am only a small time geek. I guess that you do have a point there with your situation but IMHO this is often greatly exaggerated. I have put linux on many friends (who thought linux was some piece of junk complicated unstable thing) computers with a variety of hardware and most driver problems were quickly solved (with the help of geek power :p). If my computer illiterate dad (who finished university before the transistor was invented!) can use linux without any problems (after I set up the comp), then any joe sixpack can use linux after it’s set up.
Yes, but most mortals can’t install Windows either so both are the same level of difficulty with regard to installation. They rely on the expertise of you and I so it comes down to whatever we are most familiar with.
Generally within 1 year of release I’d say that Windows is easier to deploy on any given piece of hardware. For the next year after that Linux and Windows are usually on par. Any time after that Linux is vastly superior – the open source developers catch up and have figured out all the undocumented quirks of the device, and have integrated the device into new parts of the system (support not usually present in the older Windows driver) but by that time the manufacturer is selling newer hardware and it is not economical for them to devote resources to supporting their older hardware.
In this case, Linux wins (since only management and development teams have the latest hardware and ordinary workers have older gear, Linux would usually work better for them). That is why people with the latest and greatest gear can’t understand what all the fuss is with Vista (works fine for them), and people without the latest gear [which is the vast majority] can’t stand Vista (works terribly for them).
If you have been using Linux, and you know that HP did not design the dv7 model with Linux in mind, but instead just put in whatever devices fit the machine’s budget without regard to whether or not the manufacturer of the device had bothered to enable a Linux driver to be written for it, then you knew (or should have known) what you were up against.
It is then totally up to you whether or not you want to spend the time getting the machine running Linux in some form or other.
This has absolutely nothing to do with Linux’s suitability for the mass market user of PCs, however.
If we a re talking about mass market use of Linux on the desktop, then we are talking about Linux running on a Dell where it was pre-installed, or on a EEEPC netbook, where it was pre-installed, or on a Nokia Internet tablet, where it was pre-installed.
Mac OSX is only suitable for the mass market for running on desktop machines where the OS was pre-installed before sale to the mass market user.
Windows Vista is only suitable for the mass market for running on desktop machines where the OS was pre-installed before sale to the mass market user.
Same story exactly with Linux. Linux is only suitable for the mass market for running on desktop machines where the OS was pre-installed before sale to the mass market user.
In all of those situations, the user will have no trouble at all with hardware drivers or whatever. They will all be fine.
BTW … the worst user experience of the three will be with the Vista machine. Without doubt.
Precisely so. Such people will buy a machine with the OS pre-installed, so indeed they don’t have to spend their time on it.
That doesn’t rule out Linux BTW … so I’m thinking I’m supposed to ask where you were going with this …
… but you knew all this. I suspect you are just yanking chains … so have fun.
It does however give me the opportunity to point these facts out to people who may not have realised it, so thanks for that much.
Edited 2008-10-16 09:20 UTC
I went into more detail here http://osnews.com/thread?333969, but the biggest problems were not hardware related. After 7 years using the os, hardware problems tend to get pretty easy to fix.
The original post was that consumers don’t call vendors for help, and as soon as you rule that out you are on equal footing with linux. My point is that people will either go through a vendor or another for pay channel that is readily available to them, because it doesn’t make sense to use what the original poster implied as the preferred mode of support (google, forums, usenet, irc, etc). I was not yanking chains, I mean what I said.
Stripping away the other bits, you have a very good point with pre-installed linux machines, as you can very easily turn around and ask dell for support. Those machines are not exactly easy to acquire, and I have no idea how well they actually support them (dell support tends to vary dramatically based on how expensive a thing you bought from them was). That being said, it is a valid channel I hadn’t thought of.
And my point was that you won’t get support, even if you pay for it, if what you wanted the support for is not in Microsoft’s idea of what you are “allowed” to do with the very machines that you own.
Microsoft customer: “Hello? Microsoft support? Hi. I’m having a problem getting my new Vista laptop to work with my home network storage”.
…
Microsoft customer: “What type of storage did you ask? What has that got to do with it? It works with my older Windows XP laptop, and my Windows XP desktop. I’ll have a look … … … hello? Yes, its called a Buffalo LinkStation”
…. #####
Microsoft customer: “Funny … the line seems to have gone dead”.
…
Microsoft customer: “Yes, I was calling a little while ago, and we got disconnected. I was asking about how to get my new Vista laptop working with my home network storage unit … its called a Buffalo LinkStation”.
…
Microsoft customer: “What on earth do you mean??? Why exactly do I have to buy a new Windows Home server? What is wrong with the one I already have? Didn’t I already tell you that it works perfectly with my Windows machines?”
…
So much for customer support for ordinary consumers.
Edited 2008-10-16 12:02 UTC
…. which is why I was talking about all the other options for windows and mac that are available to you in the phone book, and the lack of any such services for linux.
What services?
When you claim that “services” are available for Windows, you actually mean rip-offs and lock-ins don’t you.
Phineas Barnum was right.
Edited 2008-10-16 12:07 UTC
*sigh*
By services I mean guys in the phone book who make a living by going to peoples houses and fixing their computers, small independent neighborhood computer stores where people can bring their computer when there is a problem, Genius Bars, and hotline support from manufacturers.
If you want to comment on the things I am saying, please take the time to read back up the thread
Look, I don’t mean to denigrate the efforts of such people. They are well-intentioned, and just genuinely trying to offer a service that people clearly need.
What I mean to point out is that, however hard such people try, they are simply not going to be able to help anyone with Vista’s problems when Microsoft has deliberately written the problem into Vista in the first place.
Edited 2008-10-16 22:13 UTC
PS: Although many of such services people are great and very helpful, you do have to be a bit cautious sometimes. Very often such people have only limited skills and understanding, and they may try to talk you out of something that could actually work much better for you.
Here is a nice little article about a technique that the author calls “tech triangulation” that may help to illustrate my point for you:
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/editorials/6557/2
Kudos to you, good sir – you have brought mindless Microsoft-bashing to a new low.
I “love” anectodal evidence (because you know, it really affect others…) so I’ll contribute my experience on a Dell Presario laptop.
Vista
Came with the laptop but was unfortunately pretty much useless on it. Slow, sluggish and unresponsive, even with SP1. The fact that it was Vista Home Premium and this is a work laptop didnt help either (cant join domain. wooooo).
XP
Company standard. Was a royal goddamn pain in the rear to get working. I had to hunt for days and weeks to get drivers for all the components and in the end there’s still one that isn’t. SP3 is a must if you dont want to go totally nuts. Runs well once you actually get it working though.
Ubuntu
Worked almost perfectly out of the box and has since. Only problem is that for some reason desktop effects doesn’t work but that’s no big deal.
While I do get what you are saying, I have had a similar experience across many machines personally over the last seven years or so, and have had several friends during that time who either went linux or at least tried it. Things have gotten alot better during that time, but there are usually still several quirks that a computer gives you that need to be ironed out, or other issues that end in hours of research.
Most of the issues I ran into I blew past, due to my experience in trouble shooting the os. WPA2 was difficult to work through, and I had to hack and recompile the vmnet kernel module to get bridged networking to work (vmware is an essential app for any os I use seriously).
I’m still really not happy with networking or sound on the machine, and will either give a hacked osx a shot, or rebuild it with win2k8. Either way, vmware and WPA2 just work on both windows and osx.
//Name me one hotline where you would call and complain if your system starts to crash, programs don’t work anymore or any other typical mess, AND get a satisfying answer to solve your problem. //
Erm … Dell support … HP support … Sony support … Gateway support … IBM/Lenovo support … Toshiba support …. Fujitsu support ….
Satisfied?
Most folks buy systems from one of the above …. and typically call them when they have a problem.
I’m going to correct a different part of the comment.
Average user doesn’t know that the FOSS alternative to Windows exists. They very much care that Vista is so atrocious, but they are lead to believe (by vested interests) that there is no alternative (or that the alternative is too hard for them to use when in reality it is easier), and are never offered the FOSS solution that would solve their problems with Vista and be much kinder on their wallets.
No. People need to know that they do have an alternative.
BTW, this post is on-topic for this thread subject. The very best way to fix Vista on any machine is to re-format the drive and install a better alternative OS.
Edited 2008-10-15 22:33 UTC
Well, you don’t really need to ‘fix’ Vista because technically, it isn’t broken. I have spent some time with Vista and I can say that as long as you feed it quality software and drivers that are compatable with it, it runs very smoothly. It’s slower than XP and has a lot of ‘idiot-proof’ features that just annoy the hell out of power users, but it’s not broken. Honestly, I don’t know if any OS that’s going to run happily if you load a bunch of bad drivers on it and install softare that wasn’t designed to run on it.
It’s just too bad that most people’s experience with Vista is having it installed on top of XP with a 3yo version or Norton Something on it, or purchased from OEMs with at least 30 craplets running in startup. No wonder people hate it so much. On it’s own though, Vista is quite capable.
As for Windows Explorer, just forget all that mess and install Directory Opus
Sure, you’ll balk at the price as I did, but spend some serious time with it, and you’ll never want to use anything else again. It is just light years ahead of any other file manager on the planet.
See, that’s the thing about Windows… it’s like Firefox without any extensions installed. It’s not very impressive by itself, but what makes it great is the stuff you can load on it
Google for “Vista” and “NAS”.
Google for “Vista” and “proxy settings”.
Google for “Vista” and “file copy”.
These are just a few examples, apart from the ones noted in the referenced article (such as, to quote another poster on the thread, “the completely insane and useless automatic view settings in explorer”), of huge annoyances or just plain “don’t work right” aspects of Vista.
Its broken alright.
Edited 2008-10-16 01:52 UTC
Sorry, but I couldn’t help but shoot down some of your FUD, point in example:
http://artifact-ireland.blogspot.com/2007/10/problems-with-vista-an…
Quote: “However, the more recent and secure NTLMv2 is not generally supported by most NAS boxes. Consequently, a client attempting to login using NTLMv2 will not be able to access the NAS since it’s responses will not be understood by the NAS.”
Who’s fault is this? If the hardware doesn’t support it, then it’s their problem, not the operating systems. If there’s a “made for Vista” sticker on the NAS, then it’s the damn well hardware manufacturer’s fault, and they should be sued for mis leading the customer. Period.
I’m pretty sure we’ll find that the other things you listed are the same sorts of issues…
If we were blaming an operating system for driver issues, Linux WOULD be deep in shit.
Dave
Sorry, but I think you have the wrong end of the stick.
Before the release of Vista, there was a nice little market building up for neat little NAS devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage#Operating_sys…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_network-attached_storage_serie…
The neat little NAS devices were often made running Samba on Linux, and hence not paying any Microsoft tax.
What is worse, such a device made it very hard for Microsoft to be charging CAL licenses to very small business networks.
Small-load networks were starting to get the idea that an open NAS device could actually replace an expensive small business server.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSLU2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_network-attached_storage_serie…
Oh dear.
Microsoft brought out a competing product:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server
… but it just wasn’t going to fly against the more flexible open solutions that were starting to emerge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddwrt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openfiler
… so Microsoft “fixed it”. They deliberately changed the networking in Vista
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block#SMB2
… so that it wouldn’t work with Samba-based NAS devices. You would have to buy either a Windows server, or Windows Home Server, if you wanted to make networking work with Vista.
It is possibly OK Samba 4 has apparently de-ciphered the further obscuration that Microsoft embedded within SMB 2. But until then there are a heck of a lot of broken NAS devices out there … paid for by ordinary people in good faith.
The point in bringing this up, though, is that Microsoft goes out of its way, spending vast amounts of development money, to develop things such as SMB 2, purely to try to maintain Microsoft monopoly, to break other people’s industry and to cause you, their customer, who pays for this development to have to go and buy a new and way more expensive Microsoft NAS soultion because the only machines you could buy from the store were Vista machines.
Don’t get Vista. It will cost you dearly, and you won’t like it one bit.
Edited 2008-10-16 10:28 UTC
It’s Microsoft’s operating system, they can do whatever they like with it. Stop whining about it.
Dave
It is my hardware, or in the case of millions of other innocent people who have purchased gear in good faith … it is their hardware. They too have a right to expect it to work how they would want it to, and a reasonable expectation that it should work with other gear that they have also purchased in good faith.
Stop defending Microsoft’s efforts to rip people off.
Edited 2008-10-16 22:10 UTC
How about you start complaining to the hardware manufacturer? That’s where your beef is. Stop using your anti Microsoft rhetoric to bash Microsoft for things that it is not responsible for. Vista betas (and alphas) were out for at least 2 years prior to the final Gold release of Vista in March 2007 – if hardware and software developers had gotten off their good for nothing lazy asses, they’d have realised that they need to update their products to work with Vista. Period. Gee…
Dave
Sigh! You misunderstand once again.
Microsoft changed the SMB protocol. They kept the way that it works to themselves. They changed it so that it would not work with Samba. Deliberately.
They did this so that Vista machines would only work properly when networked to Windows servers.
It was not at all a case of other “hardware and software developers not getting off their good for nothing lazy asses” … Microsoft does not want those hardware and software developers to be able to produce (non-Microsoft) server products that could work with Vista clients.
People building Samba-based servers aren’t “supposed” to be able to do so. When I say “supposed” … I mean that Microsoft doesn’t want them to. So Microsoft tries to make it as difficult as possible to provide network services that will work with Vista clients, and they keep the protocols for how to do that to themselves, as a trade sceret.
Microsoft doesn’t want competition for their own Windows server product. Microsoft don’t want little, low-powered, inexpensive Samba-based servers to work. (In fact, they would prefer it if Samba didn’t exist, and it was impossible to build a Linux-based server that would work with Windows client machines of any version at all, but that horse has already bolted). Microsoft want Microsoft’s own server product to be your only option if you have Vista machines that you want to serve.
They want to charge you a fortune for it, too, compared with what other suppliers would charge you.
Edited 2008-10-17 03:28 UTC
For your interest, here is an artcile posted by Jeremy Allison, one of the two main people responsible for making Samba.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10436
Does this sound like a lazy good for nothing person to you? Sure doesn’t to me.
http://news.samba.org/team/
He is actually rated as a “top agenda setter” according to some sources, apparently.
http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/agenda-setters-2008/…
Number 43.
His work in writing Samba, BTW, makes possible products such as this:
http://wiki.neurostechnology.com/index.php/Neuros_OSD
… which wouldn’t exist at all if it wasn’t for Samba.
If Jeremy is lazy, and he doesn’t continue his dedicated and long-running work on Samba
http://us6.samba.org/samba/
… in order to be able to release Samba4 …
http://news.samba.org/releases/4.0.0alpha4/
… and get it released in time, then nice products such as the Neuro_OSD will work with everything except Vista.
Microsoft will be wanting you to buy something three or four times as expensive, in order for it to work with Vista … and with only a tiny fraction of the capability, BTW. And Microsoft’s product will be full of DRM, just to make the whole “experience” for you that much more miserable. And expensive. and prone to failure in a couple of years when Microsoft decide to change the DRM.
Rather than trying to imply he is lazy, shouldn’t you be cheering for the efforts of someone like Jeremy?
Edited 2008-10-17 05:47 UTC
Hang on here, SAMBA is an open source attempt at creating the ability to talk to SMB and CIFS on a UNIX or UNIX-like platform. I know who Jeremy is, and I respect his work. However – he is working on an open source interpretation of a Microsoft product/standard. It’s not his right to demand that Microsoft change it’s own standards. He’s free to try and reverse engineer in a clean room environment any standards that Microsoft might make. Microsoft isn’t obliged to help him.
Why do you open source nuts think you have the god given right to automatically get what you want? Or that proprietary software has to immediately dump it’s own closed proprietary methods and provide you with all the you can eat information buffet?
Why doesn’t open source develop its own NAS standards, and sell them (i.e. market them) to NAS manufacturers? Beat Microsoft by making a better original product, rather than trying to make an open source clone of a Microsoft standard. mmm?
The real reason this doesn’t happen is because Microsoft has a monopoly. When the vast majority of people use it, and the vast majority of manufacturers/software developers support it, that’s what the market will demand. That’s not Microsoft’s fault, it’s simply taking advantage of lax and idiotic decisions by US and other countries governments. Any smart business will do so. Governments need to start making the software/operating system industry a non monopoly for Microsoft, and then competing standards will actually stand a chance. ODF is a good example here. Until that happens, you’ll just have to live with the current situation.
I understand what you’re saying, but the free market allows Microsoft to have its own standards. And by economic forces, 3rd party NAS providers will generally support Microsoft’s standards. If they don’t, and support, as in this example, older standards, then it’s their own fault. What you’re basically saying is that Microsoft isn’t allowed to innovate or change/improve its own standards to suit its business needs and/or software development desires and/or economic methodologies. Said 3rd party NAS developers should be getting off their bums and making their devices support Vista.
Dave
A couple of things you got wrong there.
Firstly – the SMB protocol is an IBM invention. It is a standard protocol (NOT Microsofts) that allows “extensions”. Microsoft used that ability to add deliberately obscured “extensions” to that standard. That would be a bit like JVC taking the CD standard (originally invented by Phillips and Sony) and adding cryptic bits to it so that the resulting CD would only play on JVC CD players. That is not playing nice, and normally companies cannot get away with tricks like that.
Secondly … in this case Microsoft DID change the way their protocol worked, and Jeremy would rather they didn’t, because Jeremy had already worked it out the way it was.
Finally, when it comes to interoperability with other equipment, and there is a dominant player in an industry … there is actually a provision in the law, which is know as “anti-trust”, that is supposed to prevent the monopoly company from being able to do this very type of thing, to lock other potential competitors out. Without anti-trust laws, there would be no competition, and no free market.
It isn’t a god-given right … it is actually the law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitrust
“banning abusive behaviour by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position. Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others.”
In this particular case, the problem for Microsoft is “refusal to deal”. They are effectively refusing to let other products serve their Vista clients.
This is also a huge mis-perception on your part. Firstly, IBM’s SMB protocol is an open standard. Secondly, Linux offers more than one protocol to serve data to clients … a lot more (e.g a Linux server could, and often does, use NFS to serve file shares to Linux or Mac clients). Finally, the reason that Samba exists is to be able to serve data to Windows clients (because Windows clients are restricted to just the one protocol) so that, rather than “steal your standard” Samba actually just offers you “choice in servers” that you would not otherwise have as a Windows client machine user.
Actually, breaking antitrust law is indeed Microft’s fault, and they have been found guilty of this exact same thing before, by more than one court.
… or the open source world could write software to offer options to Windows users that Windows users would not otherwise get, and hence prevent Microsoft from further abusing their monopoly and charging you a fortune.
SMB is not Microsoft’s standard.
The free market actually has laws against what Microsoft is trying to do.
Again you have got it backwards. Why do you insist on doing so?
What Microsoft is doing here is trying to turn a public standard … SMB, invented by IBM … into a proprietary Windows-only protocol that you are forced to use if you decide to buy Microsoft software.
A “standard” is supposed to ALLOW interoperability, not prevent it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard
Standard gasoline for example … works in the petrol engine of any manufacturers cars. Not only in Fords. Standard CDs … play in players made by any manufacturer, not just Phillips and Sony. And so on, and so forth.
Microsoft networking is the EXACT opposite of “standard”.
Edited 2008-10-17 09:30 UTC
My bad, SMB is an IBM invention. Big deal. Where’s IBM today? They ****ed up OS2/Warp 4. They pretend to be friends of open source, but in reality, they’re only in it for the money. As soon as it becomes not viable, they’ll drop it like hot potatoes. If you think they’re a friend of open source, you’re a fool. Same with Novell.
As to anti trust, you’ll hear no argument from me that Microsoft’s been a bad boy here, and deserves to be punished. The sad thing is that the US government will NEVER allow it to be punished. And the US government is only a HUGE bully, so if another country punishes Microsoft, the US will retaliate. That’s just the way things work, whether we like or not.
I’d personally want wholly open, non proprietary standards, but sadly, business, capitalism, and human greed don’t let this happen. “It’s in our nature” (to quote a phrase from Terminator 2).
In the end, Vista is Microsoft’s products. They’re free to innovate as they see fit. They’ve done so. It’s up to 3rd parties to stop moaning, and play the Vista/Microsoft game, or don’t support Vista/Microsoft if they see fit. These same companies are bitches, they’ll bitch about Microsoft, but they’ll still support it because of greed (they know that it’ll sell). If they had any backbone, they’d publically state that Vista has deliberately altered things to increase Microsoft’s monopoly in the market, and that due to this, in protest, they would not support Microsoft windows AT ALL. Make a stand. Of course, being public companies with shareholders, they’d never ever ever do this. If 75% of hardware manufacturers (and software developers) refused to support the Windows platform, Windows would collapse, as would Microsoft.
Linux is not the answer – too many distros, poor ABI, too complex to use, too many desktop environments, too many choices, too many package management systems and so forth. The average user doesn’t want choice, they want a easy to use, good looking system that’s low maintenance.
OS X is not the answer – it’s a vendor lock in operating system of a bully that’s even worse than Microsoft in every single aspect. Apple’s lawyers are like bastard piranhas that would chew the legs off their dead grandmother for fun.
OS/2 warp 4 – good operating system, great potential, again developed by a monopolist, not the answer either. It’s still closed and proprietary.
BSDs – an unhealthy licensing agreement that allows anyone to take the code, privatise it, not give back to the community etc. Much the same issues as Linux anyways.
BEOS – killed by greed. Potential.
Nature has built man to be greedy – to dominate others. This applies to capitalism and modern business. As long as those that have power, can abuse it and remain above the law (Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, and the list goes on), problems like this will continue. It’s bigger than Microsoft. Microsoft is the result, not the cause.
Dave
Dave, I think you may find that Vista is worse than what you think, and that a lot of companies aren’t supporting it.
Even Microsoft occasionally make hints that they acknowledge Vista is a dud.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/ballmer_says_skip_vista
IE 7 is miles behind other contemporary browsers. IE 8 is an absolute, genuine dud compared to every other browser coming out soon. It will be a prize-winning flop. Even Google, who do not make an OS, has come up with a far better browser than Microsoft’s efforts.
Silverlight is an obvious proprietary trap that absolutely no-one (apart from Novell) is falling in to … with flash installed on 98% of the worlds desktop machines.
The interesting thing is that the dog that Microsoft is apparently putting its money on is Windows 7, which would appear to be no more than a warmed-over Vista SP2.
Add to the googling:
vista hp bluetooth printer
Just checked and HP still can’t figure it out, just the same broken workaround they suggested over a year ago. It worked great great on my Dad’s old XP-based notebook. His new one with Vista, not so much.
And why is this microsoft’s fault? HP need to get off their ass and work on their drivers, instead of fobbing their customers off with BS answers. Simple.
Lobby your government to force software and hardware vendors to properly support their products like every other goddamn friggen manufacturer has to do.
Dave
…I don’t see why that makes Vista great.
On the other hand, I never thought Vista was bad either. I think it is a good operating system.
Some of the “problems” with Vista are not really problems, like access control. In a work environment, with shares and multiple PC accounts, etc., those issues exist with XP too. All MS did was enable protections that did not occur on single-user, home machines in the past.
I am a Mac user… but I hold no dislike for Windows (or Linux, or any of the other operating systems) and I am glad there are choices.
Yes there are choices, but it nearly wasn’t this way. Through unethical (and sometimes illegal) business dealings in the past Microsoft has progressively strangled true competition in the market. If it wasn’t for the remarkable leadership of Steve Jobs Apple would still be in decline. If it wasn’t for the ethics of Richard Stallman then Linux wouldn’t be in as wide use (there would be no GPL to inspire others to contribute and advocate a spirit of liberty). Sure, there’d be traces of Unix and BSD out there but it would be a Windows-only world with Windows-only formats for the most part.
Windows itself is technically ok (although I find it relatively slow to so some operations; for example even XP is horrifically slow copying many small files using Explorer [relative to Linux], Vista was even worse but this has been improved in SP1 [but still sub-par to Linux]) – but don’t forget that the goal of the parent company is to inexorably restrict your choice to variants of their products only. Keep that in mind when you laud the fact you still have some choice.
I understand big business, and lament the damage done to Be, Inc. by both the competition and the inability of Be’s management (this is all as an example) to capitalize on a fine operating system and their hardware.
And there ARE choices still… some (good OS’s) have been winnowed (BeOS, OS/2, AmigaOS, etc.) because of the behind the scenes (and up in our face) dealings of Microsoft with hardware manufacturers, but there will always be choices…
I only mentioned that bit as an aside because sometimes people just hate a product because of its maker, whether it is a good product or not.
I don’t know… not trying to start an argument here. Being an OS enthusiast, as I am sure you are since you post here, I just like to temper bias (and I am not saying it isn’t justified in some way) a bit. I really try to find something to like in every operating system.
Thanks for you considered post. Hopefully you saw in my post an admission that Windows can be good from a technical point of view – so I was trying to present some balance.
However, my main attempted point was about ethics and the fact that the fact you have a choice is due to fortunately circumstances. We could easily have had a past where choice was effectively removed – and may yet have a future where these choices are removed (due to undocumented proprietary formats, unsubstantiated patent threats made over the Linux kernel etc.). Choice is good, but we also must consciously choose to preserve choices.
Yes, but I was speaking about the operating system, not corporate ethics and the shenanigans that go on behind the scenes that may or may not limit my choices.
My mention of any bias was not regarding choice, people have the right to exercise choice and not purchase products from companies that they believe to be unethical. Bully for them! My point was that people seem to find problems and issues with Windows Vista BECAUSE of they associate the operating system to an unethical company. Am I wrong about that? I don’t think I am… tough thing to PROVE tho’.
I see your point, I just did not see its relevance to mine. But again, I agree with you. We must choose to preserve choices.
Or if you look at it from the perspective of doing tech support: there’s plenty to hate about every OS
I’ve used Vista on friends computers but I thought it was okay. Even with the tweaks suggested by the author the greatness I can’t get is the ability to run with a similar RAM profile as XP with similar application speeds to XP without buying a new box. That would make it great. I would even buy Windows 7 if it had the above great profile.
I think the article would have been more aptly named: “Making Windows Vista Tolerable.”
My biggest problem with Vista is with its assumption that I have a 20″+ monitor. I mean, the real-estate wasted should be getting environmentalists all riled up!
Another issue is in identifying how much memory is actually being used, the system should differentiate between “actual” allocations versus cache/buffer allocations. Y’know, like Ubuntu. Of course, this is really just a ProcessManager/whatever it’s called ( brain fart ) thing .
UAC doesn’t really bother me, I can see where Microsoft is coming from on that one, and the migratory mentality is needed for numerous reasons beyond Microsoft’s control.
Of course, I just stick with the operating systems as follows:
BeOS Dano 5.1d0 – PhOS patched
MacOS X ( 10.4, I think ), jas patched
Windows XP SP3, heavily modified – of course
Ubuntu 8.0.4 – needs some work, it gots bugs
PhOS Dev-Serenity ( BeOS, Haiku, custom )
Haiku
With the exception of Haiku, all are selectable from the BeOS boot menu ( yeah, I’m that good ). Haiku is installed on a solo 200GB SATA drive, and I swap it out for testing. The 200GB drive doesn’t always have Haiku on it, sometimes it is a clone of my PhOS Dev-Serenity when I am ready to test critical drivers.
Hmm…
–The loon
Strange. Windows Vista looks plain awesome and doesn’t seem to waste anything on my Aspire One (8.9″ 1024×600). I did revert to the old-fashioned start menu, but that’s it. I always do that anyway (screw those overly complicated modern menus).
Little off-topic, but it just FLIES too (WITH full Aero Glass stuff). Thanks to the fancy real hard drive I put in there (1.8″ ZIF Hitachi drive) – replacing the crappy SSD with this real hard drive, and installing Vista on it, turned this device from a fun gimmick into my main notebook.
Netbooks are teh awesome. I need more of them or else they’ll die of starvation… THEY ARE SO DAMN LICKABLE.
Ahem.
Edited 2008-10-15 21:51 UTC
Apologies for drifting off topic but how do you get on with the Acer’s goofy trackpad buttons?
They’ve just dropped below GBP200 locally and my big reservation is the trackpad.
I always used to do that on Windows XP, but with Vista you’re missing one of Vista’s best UI improvements – fast, system-wide search. Press the windows key then type the first few letters of the app’s name, then hit enter. That’s usually all that’s needed to launch apps from Vista’s new start menu; 1 or 2 seconds max for me. You can launch command-line utils from it too, eg “ping google.com”; no need for the run dialog anymore. I’ve even added a ‘shutdown’ link to the start menu so I can type “<Windows key>shu<enter>” to shutdown; similarly for hibernate and reboot. A real time-saver and convenience, and the one thing I miss most on XP.
Too bad the search doesn’t include firefox’s bookmarks though…
Edited 2008-10-16 12:26 UTC
I’ve been doing the same for years in XP using colibri (http://colibri.leetspeak.org/). After discovering colibri I’ve basically stopped using the start menu to launch programs
:oD
“The loon” is right … only a geeked-up retard would use more than one OS for 99% of desktop work.
Look, dummies, it’s simple:
Linux for servers.
Windows for desktops.
Macs for designers.
Duh.
When you purchase a commercial version of linux you get support. If you use a free download you do not. Why do the Windows fans insist on spreading the myth that linux does not come with support?
Let me tell you a lil story about this “support” myth. Many years ago, I bought a copy of Suse (I think it was 8 pro from memory). I intended to install it on my laptop (Compaq armada 1750). No matter what I did, I could not get sound working. Suse’s online support had FSA information. So, I EMailed Suse. Man, what a waste of time. Firstly, I was told that they did not support soundcard configurations. Period. If I wanted that support, I had to pay extra money for extended support (several hundred dollars). I’d already forked out nearly $180 for Suse by this stage, damned if I would do it again. BTW – Redhat 7, 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3 all worked out of the box on this very same laptop. Without any *single* issue.
So, not all Linux support is good. The few times I’ve rang Microsoft, they’ve never charged me, and they’ve always been very prompt, very professional, and provided me with a solution. Free of charge.
Dave
Come now, Dave. Don’t rain on the freetard parade of FUD.
You know you love linux, and you know Windows sucks. Thus is the truth of Stallmanism, and only complete idiots believe otherwise!
Hail Linux! Hail Stallman’s balls! Haill freetardism! Death to Microsoft!
etc., etc., blah blah blah.
I spent some time tweaking Vista fairly soon after I installed it, including implementing some of the suggestions in this article. It’s amazing just how much less frustrating and aggravating daily use of Vista becomes once a few nice changes have been made.
Disabling the completely insane and useless automatic view settings in explorer on its own did a lot to improve Vista. No more seemingly random settings, like thumbnail view being repeatedly chosen for folders containing FLAC files and text documents. No more completely useless column headers, like audio metadata (album, artist, bitrate, etc.) for folders that don’t contain any compatible files. 99% of the time all I want is a list view with name, date, size and type as the column headers, and now I have it.
Now that Vista’s explorer no longer insists on randomly opening folders in thumbnail view I haven’t had a single crash. Explorer just can’t reliably create video thumbnails, not even when the files are perfectly fine. I use an image browser to look through my photos, Vista’s thumbnail view was slow anyway.
Once the novelty of the new GUI aesthetics wore off I set it back to the Windows Classic theme. No more distractions and wasted screen space, just a nice usable system.
With the nice features that were added to Vista, I’m definitely happier with it than XP. That’s something I didn’t think I’d ever say when I first used it.
But you don’t seem to be the only one satisfied with Vista once you got rid of the fluff.
So why did Microsoft (with all of it’s research dollars) ship Vista in such an annoying configuration?
none of this crap makes vista great, not even close.
made me feel kinda dizzy
OK, I guess there is some good bits in there, will read it at home…
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-10068803-17.html
Some quotes:
… Hey, I’ve got an even better idea, folks.
Since Vista stinks so badly, and Windows 7 is just a patched up and regurgitated version of Vista … then why not switch over to Mac (it will cost you for the hardware, unless Pystar wins, but it is very nice) or Linux (run it on all your existing gear for as long as you want for the cost of one DVD download) now, and save yourself significantly greater costs later on?