OSNews

In comparision - if Linux comes close to Vista it would be considered "SHOCK AND AWE".

It would indeed be almost a Greek tragedy if a release of Linux came out anywhere as crappy as most people think Vista is.

Please advertise for slashdot somewhere else, thanks!

--bornagainpenguin

In the marketplace, it is the subjective that ultimately makes the difference. I do agree that it is getting a bit tiresome, but MS carries so much weight in the marketplace, the proliferation of these sort of articles is inevitable.

Vista will be the only choice for the majority of consumers, not because there are no other choices, rather because there is little exposure and limited knowledge of the choices in the consumer market place. Businesses with informed and knowledgable IT departments also have to cater to their users who are pretty much consumer type users. The kind of users who use "fast" and "slow" as technical terms.

Technical discussions are important and valuable, but when it comes to selling computers what matters is:

1) Does it work - to the consumer "good enough" is acceptable
2) Is it pretty - to the consumer this represents progress
3) Is it secure - the consumer wants to see their Internet Security Suite working in the background.

Mess with these and consumers may start to think differently. If and when they do, they will be thinking subjectively.

Please, enough with the subjective anti-Vista articles. This isn't slashdot.

I disagree for the following reasons:

1. It seems that this article was written especially for OSNews, the kind of stuff they actively solicit. You are perfectly free to "wow" OSNews with your Vista experience.

2. Any survey of several weeks or more of the articles on OSNews might show bias, but at least not against Microsoft in general.

3. A balance of positive and negative is only that, just a balance but not necessarily a fair reflection of reality at all. What good is such a balance with Enron or your favorite charity? Either "balanced" case likely distorts the essential character of the topic in order to achieve some false sense of balance. Thus, if Vista is negative on the whole, more anti-Vista articles are perfectly natural.

4. Slashdot indeed has problems, but it is not at all clear that the editors oppose Vista all that much, at least without good reason. Do note that both sites rely on submissions. Moreover, last time I checked, one of their advertisers was indeed Microsoft.

5. Of course with any article you are perfectly free to tear it apart. Have at it!

6. Wake me up when these skeptical articles taken together have a tiny fraction of the influence of the half BILLION dollar marketing budget to promote Vista.

Edited 2007-02-15 19:26

You are perfectly free to "wow" OSNews with your Vista experience.

I would also add, in the vein of being as open and balanced as possible, that the submission queue is available for viewing (well... titles, at least) on the submission page. You don't see that on many editor controlled sites.

Melissa, Code Red, ILoveYou, etc?

I'm pretty sure that all 3 pre-date the release of XP.

Edited 2007-02-16 02:37

Oct 25 2001 Official XP release Date?

W97M.Melissa.A
Discovered: March 26, 1999

CodeRed Worm
Discovered: July 16, 2001

That fact that these were dicovered and fixed before the the release of XP only makes the havoc that they were able to wreak even worse.

That fact that these were dicovered and fixed before the the release of XP only makes the havoc that they were able to wreak even worse.

I don't claim to recall exactly, but didn't those only affect Win2k systems?

And didn't all of those viruses depend on exploits for which patches had been released months earlier?

I understand your sentiment but John Doe makes no pretenses about an objective review. And he's right on every issue, complete with his raw disgust. OK, maybe we've hammered enough proverbial nails into the Vista coffin, but misery loves company does it not?

What concerns me is the next big challenge that lays ahead - that being the efficient use of multi core processors. Think the OS code is already too complex? Things can only get worse.

I don't have a problem with his conclusions, just the style of the article. It's not well-written. Period.

I agree. There are some fair points, but the style is a bit childish.

EDIT: Very childish :-D.

Also, I wouldn’t want an operating system like OS X built on top of something like BeOS. afaik (and as far as I’ve seen), BeOS is really slow, but it’s real time, which makes it feel very responsive. It also has a couple of limitations regarding the number of threads, tasks etc. which I can’t remember exactly, but I think running an environment like OS X’s would kind of push its limits.

The other problem I’ve got is that graphics subsystems, desktops and ease of use have nothing to do with OS design.

Edited 2007-02-15 19:49

Call me crazy but I liked the style. Woohah!!

Call me crazy but I liked the style

Hi crazy! ;}

/+1

Being a Linux/Windows/BSD developer I had (and still have, from time to time) the displeasure of using Vista (RTM).
While I agree that Vista is slow and DRM infested, the article is poorly written.

- Gilboa

I am using it right now. It's faster for me than XP was on the same machine. Much of the additional memory usage of Vista is due to "ReadyBoost" - caching the initial binary image of frequently used programs in memory. Open Office apps open in about a second - without the open office preloader. Other apps just pop to life immediately. If you have 1GB of RAM or more, Vista will definitely feel faster than XP.

What is this DRM infestation that you speak of? I mean seriously. All the old media programs I used in XP work in Vista. Rhapsody, Youtube (flash player), Windows Media, and iTunes. I can also play unencrypted MPEG4 content just the way I used to in XP. Is there something I am missing here?

I hardly can give you any sort of credit for that post you wrote because as soon as you wrote that Vista was running faster than XP I call shenanigans. If you had a malware infested XP install then yes it would be faster. But a clean install? I dont think so and neither do most of the Vista users. I have used Vista for a long time and it is slower than XP. Just enough to annoy me to no end.

Call 'shenanigans' all you want. I had a clean install of XP from the factory, only a month old, and I upgraded it to Vista. Boot time is about the same. But most apps launch faster (thanks to SuperFetch), and the GPU accelerated user interface feels smoother, faster, and 'snappier' to me. I also experience no user interface 'hangs' in the explorer or file dialogs, as I used to quite regularly in XP, especially when dealing with networked resources.

In XP I turned off all the little menu animations and drop shadows, as they were just too slow for my liking. In Vista they are so fluid and fast that I hardly notice them.

They've also done an excellent job in Vista of given you a responsive interface, even when all the data isn't in yet. For example, the add/remove programs dialog used to take forever to load in XP as the applet had a lot of work to do to interrogate all the installed apps. In Vista you get an immediately responsive applet, and the program entries fill in as Vista finishes inspecting each one. This is just one example. There are multiple places in Vista where this principle has been applied. In general you will find it very rare, even with very long running tasks, to be presented with a non-responsive UI. Microsoft listened to their users, and delivered on this one.

Sorry, the Vista user interface is indeed faster than XP was on this machine. If you have some old machine with 512MB and a crappy GPU, that probably won't be the case, but the vast majority of Vista installs will be on new hardware - MS knew this, and designed for it. If XP is faster than Vista on your old hardware, fine, stick with XP.

Interesting, my compaq laptop is new. And "Vista ready" but still runs crappy. Granted it's not a fancy laptop, it's a low end laptop that most people can afford ($700 USD) and sells like hot cakes from Best Buy here in the states.

Yet without 1GB of ram (Which didn't come with the laptop) VISTA sucks. That is cool, XP and Linux kill on the laptop. Now with a GIG, Vista runs ok. I don't mind it. But a lot of people are going to run into this issue when they buy new machines (Unless Windows HOME Basic doesn't have the bells and whistles anyway)

Like Dell, their biggest sellers are their PC's under $600 and most of them come with 512 MB of ram, lowend GPUs and Windows home basic. (like my laptop)

"What is this DRM infestation that you speak of? I mean seriously. All the old media programs I used in XP work in Vista. Rhapsody, Youtube (flash player), Windows Media, and iTunes. I can also play unencrypted MPEG4 content just the way I used to in XP. Is there something I am missing here?"

What people mean is that now by default MS has more control over the ability to turn on and off features in your Windows desktop. So if tomorrow the RIAA says "Hey we don't want Windows machines to run unsigned or un DRMed files, MS has the ability to make that happen.

"If you have 1GB of RAM or more, Vista will definitely feel faster than XP. "

True, if you put a Lamborghini engine in a VW bug it will run faster then most sports cars (But it's still a VW bug)

On my Laptop (Which is supposed to be vista ready) XP runs fine with 512 MB of ram. But in Vista I loose most of the bells and whistles. It's funny because most of those same features in the Mac work fine on my Powerbook with 512 MB of ram.

Vista is a space and memory hog! That is for sure.

"What people mean is that now by default MS has more control over the ability to turn on and off features in your Windows desktop. So if tomorrow the RIAA says "Hey we don't want Windows machines to run unsigned or un DRMed files, MS has the ability to make that happen. "

What you are talking about is key revocation for Bluray/HD-DVD content. Yes, Vista has a built in player for this content, and yes, it supports key revocation, as required by all such players. This is not 'DRM infestation', it's a part of the licensing requirements for the next gen HD formats. All players, hardware or software, will have to implement the same key revocation mechanisms - even if written to run under the magically user friendly and always secure OS X.

"True, if you put a Lamborghini engine in a VW bug it will run faster then most sports cars (But it's still a VW bug) "

1GB of RAM is hardly extravagant these days. It's cheap, even in laptops.

"On my Laptop (Which is supposed to be vista ready) XP runs fine with 512 MB of ram. But in Vista I loose most of the bells and whistles. It's funny because most of those same features in the Mac work fine on my Powerbook with 512 MB of ram. "

This is a function of your video card, not the available RAM. For the bells and whistles, you will need a relatively modern laptop, with an at least middle of the road 3D accelerated GPU. I'd wager your mac has a better GPU than your XP laptop.

Besides, according to most of the people around here, the bells and whistles are utterly useless, and just pale imitations of features Apple implemented years ago.

"Vista is a space and memory hog! That is for sure."

Unused memory is a waste. Vista uses as much memory as it can to speed things up. With 1GB or more, this works quite nicely.

"1GB of RAM is hardly extravagant these days. It's cheap, even in laptops."

True, but you might want to let people know this. As always MS lowballs what a machine REALLY needs. If you go to Dell etc, entry level machines don't come with a GB of ram or fancy GPU

"This is a function of your video card, not the available RAM. For the bells and whistles, you will need a relatively modern laptop, with an at least middle of the road 3D accelerated GPU. I'd wager your mac has a better GPU than your XP laptop. "

It's interesting that once I added 1GB of ram to my laptop the bells and whistles run just fine. Same laptop.

"Besides, according to most of the people around here, the bells and whistles are utterly useless, and just pale imitations of features Apple implemented years ago. "

That is true, but since I paid for them (Bells and Whistles) and the sales man tried to sell me on this laptop because it's "Vista Ready" I figured I might as well get them. LOL!

The one thing I have always liked about Apple is the fact that they tell users on their website in very good and concise detail how the bells and whistles can help productivity, not just look cool.

Microsoft is the KING of marketing and getting people to use their products, but I have never thought they do a good job at letting people know what things do and what they are for. Like on the Mac you have spotlight and it's broken down on the site, very easy to find what spotlight does. I am hard pressed to tell someone what windows search does. Even more funny if you turn on the classic start menu in Windows Vista you don't get the search box and so in that case you prob will never use the Windows search. When you go to start, search it looks the same as Windows XP. Not like something new and more productive.

1GB of RAM is hardly extravagant these days. It's cheap, even in laptops.

This is no excuse for bloat. Other OSes manage to do similare things with less. And 'cheap' is a subjective term. I call that arrogant...

Unused memory is a waste. Vista uses as much memory as it can to speed things up. With 1GB or more, this works quite nicely.

*LOL*
All OSes that know virtual memory use as much physical memory as possible. I don't know any OS that 'wasts' memory. What was your point?

I hear the domain enquirernews.com is still available.

Is there already osopinion.com for that sort of stuff?

Hummmmm, I don't use MS OS's at all, only thing I like about them is that they break and people pay me $50 an hour to fix them.

So I guess I will learn to like it. Long as it holds the MS tradition of breaking and breaking and me making and making! It's all good.

Thank you MS. My trip to Brazil was great thanks to you.

Hummmmm, I don't use MS OS's at all, only thing I like about them is that they break and people pay me $50 an hour to fix them.

Man, you need to up your fee. I thought I was low balling it at $125/hr

Damn, you are right about that. I am cheating myself. Maybe I can make a trip to Madagasgar this time if I up my fees.

"Man, you need to up your fee. I thought I was low balling it at $125/hr"

I charge $50/hr also, but then again I live in Maine. Where do you live D.C. But honestly, it is Windows, and regardless of how much we all charge to support it; it does pay our bills. Thanks MS

but then again I live in Maine. Where do you live D.C.

I reside in NYC. So consider it a cost of living increase.

I am in DC. LOL! I need to move to Maine. The $50 will go a LONG way!

Yes I friend of mine have always wonder what the historical cost of MS windows will be. Can you imagine the dollars that could have been saved all for the lack of reasonable design. Gates should be giving all the money away. The cost to the economy has been so high he owes it too us.

Somehow I'm sure it'll become the "de facto" OS. But I won't use it, at least not on my MacBook.

Enjoy Vista!

"allegedly", he did not say that....

but he did say these belters,

I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time.

We will never make a 32-bit operating system, but I'll always love IBM.

It's possible, you can never know, that the universe exists only for me. If so, it's sure going well for me, I must admit. (Time, 13 January 1997)

Understand that this is the last physical format there will ever be. * On Blu-ray. The Daily Princetonian interview (14 Oct 2005)

Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time. * BBC News (24 January 2004

What's a network? * Question by Gates in the early 80s, as quoted by Hermann Hauser of Acorn Computers in speech at the University of Southampton (1 May 1996)

The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC. * BusinessWeek, 26 November 1984

There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. * Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995)

About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. * Speech at the University of Washington, as reported in "Gates, Buffett a bit bearish" CNET News (2 July 1998)


from Wikipedia

Oh yeah, I think Windows addiction is a real danger in our society *rolls eyes 360 degrees*

Actually it is. Windows piracy is as bad as Microsoft getting children hooked on Windows and MS Office by giving it away freely or cheaply to educational centres.

This way the children learns nothing but obeying Microsoft. Very smart and very unethical (and there fore very Microsoftish).

Addiction is a sad story, but this type of addiction is disgusting

Actually it is.

Oh please. How is Windows addiction (whatever that is) a "real danger" - especially when compared to additions that are harmful in quantifiable ways?

Windows piracy is as bad as Microsoft getting children hooked on Windows and MS Office by giving it away freely or cheaply to educational centres.

Your contention is that "practice N is bad, because it's just as bad as practice N"? Isn't that basically a texbook example of a sophist argument?

No, that is not my contention and no, it is not a sophist argument.

But perhaps I wasn't clear enough in what my contention was/is.

Windows piracy (and Microsoft accepting Windows piracy when wishing to expand its market) is as bad as Microsoft giving software to children for free or at a very low fee, because: Both kinds of behaviour make people highly dependent on Microsoft and its software "solutions", taking away the option for children to learn other platforms and other solutions (thereby losing potential knowledge) - effectively leading to a one-system IT-world which is very vulnerable - as is evident from the Windows-oriented malware.

Windows piracy (and Microsoft accepting Windows piracy when wishing to expand its market) is as bad as Microsoft giving software to children for free or at a very low fee, because:

But is your objection to the practice itself? Or the fact that Microsoft is engaging in the practice? If Micrososft is to be condemned for turning a blind eye to piracy that benefits them, then does that make Apple significantly worse because of the way they deliberately target the education market? (BTW, if anyone thinks that strategy is driven by some magnanimous desire to "give our children a better computing experience," then I have a bridge for sale - no cheques, small bills only, please).

I should also point out that criticizing Microsoft for "allowing" piracy puts you in the position of supporting their product activation schemes (if one is to be intellectually consistent, that is).

Both kinds of behaviour make people highly dependent on Microsoft and its software "solutions", taking away the option for children to learn other platforms and other solutions (thereby losing potential knowledge) - effectively leading to a one-system IT-world which is very vulnerable - as is evident from the Windows-oriented malware.

Anyone who has studied ecology is aware of the inherent vulnerability-to-disaster of a mono-culture. And if you were criticizing them for an excessive dependence on vertical integration / lock-in through artificial "incompatibilities," then I would completely agree with you.

But the phenomenon that you're talking about is much more of a side-effect of other factors (like the ones in the above paragraph) that the result of conscious strategy. I think you would have a very difficult time, for instance, building a legal case - either to argue that the result is some sort of quantifiable harm, or that it was the result of deliberate malice.

I'm all for criticism of Microsoft when they deserve it. Hell, I support Windows systems every day - and as someone who used to work in a stable, the only practical difference is that working with Windows only requires you to shovel horseshit in the figurative sense. But criticizing them, simply because they're a popular target, just results in a big dogpile of anti-fanboism.

What has always bothered me is that Microsoft allowed it for so long and now has the nerve to act like they didn't.

It wouldn't be any more relevant if Microsoft had 2 million employees and 10,000 of them worked on Vista.

But it is relevant. The number of employees is an indication of both the size of the company and the revenue it generates. A big company with a big income and a big market-share has an obligation to maintain its reputation, or they will become smaller.

BTW, Linux has had 500,000 "employees" over the last 10 years ("one million eyes" divided by two == 500,000 people). :p

500000 divided by 250+ distros is a lot less than 10000 :-)

Besides,i think MS lately has problems with getting the kind of wizzards Google attracts..

Besides,i think MS lately has problems with getting the kind of wizzards Google attracts..

Great point. I have 6 friends that I classify as "wizards," i.e. they are frighteningly smart compared to other really smart people. Four of them work for Google, one is a PhD working on dynamic 3D Bezier meshing for modeling the flow of blood cells through heart valves, and the last is living off the grid in northern CA doing who knows what (nothing good, I promise you that).

These people wouldn't ever consider working for Microsoft. It's not a thought that would enter their minds, and if they were given an offer, they'd probably laugh incredulously.

I always wonder: what the hell is google doing with all these "whizzes?" The smartest guy I know worked at Google for a summer as well, and I just couldn't see why someone of his caliber would want to work on a chat client. Or an algorithm for placing ads on webpages (not saying it's easy stuff, and I can see why you'd need to be smart to do it, but I don't see it as the cool side of computing).

Google must have something interesting up its sleeves that it's being quiet about, or I really think it's underutilizing all this talent that it's winning. Of course they're not very open about things.

>It wouldn't be any more relevant if Microsoft had 2 million employees and 10,000 of them worked on Vista.

What's relevant is that BE, Inc. had only a hundred or so employees, and in 5 years or less they put out an OS from scratch that still makes any version of Windows look like the pigs they truely are.

No problem! The rest of us who:

Don't need to be hacked
Don't need to be cracked
Don't need viruses
Don't need spyware
Don't want to worry about online banking
Don't want be scared 24/7
Don't want to pay extra or have to steal Virus scan and Spyware remover software!

Will appreciate our one button mouse and premium hardware.

(Oh yea and you WILL have to pay for premium hardware if you really want the slick visuals)

Edit:

(It will be worthy of the title "The best windows ever")

Which means it's still a poor mans Mac. LOL!

Edited 2007-02-15 19:29

I have never been hacked, cracked, had a virus, suffered spyware, am not worried about online banking, am not scared 24/7 nor do I run virus software (finding it generally to be a cure worse than the disease).

I understand there are people who do have issues with these sorts of things on windows. If you think for a second, that if OSX represented 95%+ of the desktop OS market that it wouldn't suffer from the same problems, you are badly mistaken.

BTW, I don't want a poor man's mac. I don't want a Mac - I've tried it, I just don't like OS X and I honestly don't care for Job's design philophy where form trumps function on a regular basis.

I like windows. And I really like Vista. You don't. Please go use your mac and be happy and smug.

Mac wouldn't have as much of a problem as windows if it had 95% of the market, as it has it's unix underpinnings, meaning that it's secure by design, not as an after though like windows.

deleted. sorry

Edited 2007-02-15 22:36

"Mac wouldn't have as much of a problem as windows if it had 95% of the market, as it has it's unix underpinnings, meaning that it's secure by design, not as an after though like windows."

Unix is "Secure by design"? You should read up on the history of Unix, particularly the first 20 years.

Oh, and if Mac OSX is "secure by design", please explain the continual Security Updates that Apple releases:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/security_updates/

As you can see from the above link, there were many Security Updates in 2006, and even more in 2005 (basically as frequent as Windows). Are you really telling me that if Mac OSX had 95% share, none of those many flaws would have been exploited? Come on, now.

Ummmm, every piece of software written has security patches. The question is??

How many of those flaws have been exsploited and how many of those flaws are CRITICAL.

Hummmm the patch that came out yesterday for Vista was critical.

Hummmm the patch that came out yesterday for Vista was critical.

That patch was for Microsoft's malware detection engine which is shared across a number of their security applications including OneCare, Antigen, Forefront, and Defender. It's a flaw in an application component, not an OS flaw.

The component is part of Vista just like IE and just like IE you can't remove it so you might as well say it's part of the OS.

Interesting, that is what EVERY Windows fan says "I have never been cracked or hacked or gotten spyware" Yet we know that %60 or more of Windows machines have some form of Spyware. On top of that 90% of the people out there don't even know they have spyware!

And that lame argument that "If Mac's had 95% of the OS market then they would suffer from the same problems!" I am sorry but having more machines out there does not make for more holes!

Right now VISTA doesn't have 1% of the PC market but yet has already shown a couple of CRITICAL holes!

Please break that down to me?

So yes I will go back to my Mac and be smug and keep collecting money off those real world people who DO get spyware and viruses! And I will keep making fun of the 50 billion dollar company that sucks.

Oh and it's interesting that almost everything that is in Windows has been done in the Mac and then some. From the stupid chess game to the desktop search to the transparent windows and Widgets, Gadgets or what ever you want to call them. MS is a follower not a leader. Sorry.

Vista is the poor mans Mac. Most people when you ask them why they don't have a Mac they say they can't afford it. But then after they pay me, buy MS office, Antivirus etc they are spending the same and scratching their heads. LOL! (I thought I was saving money getting the Windows machine!)

"Interesting, that is what EVERY Windows fan says "I have never been cracked or hacked or gotten spyware" Yet we know that %60 or more of Windows machines have some form of Spyware. On top of that 90% of the people out there don't even know they have spyware! "

I've seen more than my share of spyware on friend's and family's PCs - just not on my own. I don't use file-sharing software, download cracked software, or dubious 'free' game software. I stick to installing software from known sources, and have thus far never been infected by a virus or spyware.

"And that lame argument that "If Mac's had 95% of the OS market then they would suffer from the same problems!" I am sorry but having more machines out there does not make for more holes! "

No, it makes for more targets. I don't know if OSX has more or fewer holes than does Vista/XP, but I guarantee you it has holes. But who cares. You can waste all the time required to exploit them and build a botnet on a platform that has a minute fraction of the market - or you can spend your time writing exploits for a platform that has over 95% of the market. If I were in the business of writing such software, I know the platform I'd target.

"Right now VISTA doesn't have 1% of the PC market but yet has already shown a couple of CRITICAL holes!

Please break that down to me? "

Software will always have holes - I don't know what I need to 'break down' for you. I do know that Vista is much more impervious to exploits that would take an XP installation down. Address Space Layout Randomization for example makes it extremely difficult for malware to exploit buffer overruns and the like, as each system, and indeed, each reboot, results in a different address space layout. At worst, the buffer overrun will result in a crashed machine, not an 'owned' machine. OSX however can still be entirely compromised by a single buffer overflow.

"So yes I will go back to my Mac and be smug and keep collecting money off those real world people who DO get spyware and viruses! And I will keep making fun of the 50 billion dollar company that sucks."

Smug indeed.

"Oh and it's interesting that almost everything that is in Windows has been done in the Mac and then some. From the stupid chess game to the desktop search to the transparent windows and Widgets, Gadgets or what ever you want to call them. MS is a follower not a leader. Sorry. "

Again, Bully for Mac and OS X. I really don't care about the Mac, as I don't use it. I care about having a excellent Windows experience, which Vista provides. I don't care where its features come from, or who they may have been copied from, all I care about is that they improve my productivity and overall user experience.

"Vista is the poor mans Mac. Most people when you ask them why they don't have a Mac they say they can't afford it. But then after they pay me, buy MS office, Antivirus etc they are spending the same and scratching their heads. LOL! (I thought I was saving money getting the Windows machine!)"

Office on the Mac is free? Do tell. I can afford a Mac - instead I spent about the same amount of money on a Lenovo Thinkpad. Why? Because I *like* windows and almost all the software I own is Windows only. I like the task bar. I like the start menu. I like application menus inside the application window. I like the left mouse button. I like windows explorer, and absolutely love the swiss-army explorer found in Vista. Get this through your head. I have tried a mac, and don't like it. Couldn't stand the Finder, couldn't stand the Dock. You disagree - great - go use your mac and be happy. Stop trying to convince me that my windows experience sucks, when I know for a fact that *I* am more productive on XP than on OSX, and even more productive on Vista.

If Windows is so great to you then why waste your time on here defending it when you don't have a point to prove. To you Windows is the best thing since slced bread and that is that.

Great.

All I am here doing is pointing out the obvious. Even if you like the look and feel and usability! Windows security record SUCKS. That is the facts.

If your point is that no matter how sucky and insecure it is you are still going to use it then you could of said that in one sentence.

But to say "I do know that Vista is much more impervious to exploits that would take an XP installation down." When we have not had time to find that out is a little silly. And to say "OSX however can still be entirely compromised by a single buffer overflow." When you have YET seen that happen in the wild is a little silly also.

It's cool. I have no problem with you liking Windows. Great. The funny thing is if MS was REALLY serious about things like security I might like them also. But they are not as evidenced by the problems with UAC.

Anyway, good luck. Hope your identity doesn't get stolen or something like that.

It's not so much of a fact as you would think. Sure, Windows 9X had a terrible security record (it has no real security boundaries), but that doesn't really reflect much about current Microsoft OSes. Before SP2, there was a pretty serious problem with email viruses (mostly application-level flaws in the bundled mail client) and with a few system services (RPC buffer overflows). These were often implementation issues, not real design flaws.

The rest of the stuff you see, like spyware, malware, and shovelware are just a result of the toxic Windows development environment. There are lots of computers out there running Windows owned by cheapskates (like me, for instance). Since it's such a common platform, there's always someone who's going to write a piece of software for cheaper than you are. So what do you do? Give your program away for free, but include a piece of adware to make some revenue. Users are happy because they get free software and don't really know about your spyware. The Windows PC market just reflects the result of a long and drawn out race to the bottom. As long as you can tell who the scum-suckers are, you can stay safe.

Perhaps your clients just aren't savvy enough to pick up on this. It doesn't help that some of the scumsuckers are actually companies that aren't obviously shady. People like Real, McAfee, Norton, and Dell (who'll include anything just to make a buck).

Security isn't magical, and there isn't really anything Microsoft can do to defend their OS against people who make crapware for it, aside from suing these people (and I'm sure that'd go over quite well). So, why is it that Windows is less secure than a Mac?? What mechanisms is it missing? Can you even explain to me in your own words what the problem with UAC is?

The UAC problem is in detail here:

(Its also on OSNEWS)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=29

Edit from blog: http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2007/02/vista-security-model...

Vista Security Model – A Big Joke?

Today I saw a new post at Mark Russinovich’s blog which I take as a response to my recent musings about Vista security features, where I pointed out several problems with UAC, like e.g. the attack that allows for a low integrity process to hijack the high integrity level command prompt. Those who read the whole article undoubtedly noticed that my overall opinion of vista security changes was still very positive – after all everybody can do mistakes and the fact UAC is not perfect, doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s a step into the right direction, i.e. implementing least-privilege policy in Windows OS.

However, I now read this post by Mark Russinovich (a Microsoft employee), which says:

"It should be clear then, that neither UAC elevations nor Protected Mode IE define new Windows security boundaries. Microsoft has been communicating this but I want to make sure that the point is clearly heard. Further, as Jim Allchin pointed out in his blog post Security Features vs Convenience, Vista makes tradeoffs between security and convenience, and both UAC and Protected Mode IE have design choices that required paths to be opened in the IL wall for application compatibility and ease of use."


And then we read:

"Because elevations and ILs don’t define a security boundary, potential avenues of attack, regardless of ease or scope, are not security bugs. So if you aren’t guaranteed that your elevated processes aren’t susceptible to compromise by those running at a lower IL, why did Windows Vista go to the trouble of introducing elevations and ILs? To get us to a world where everyone runs as standard user by default and all software is written with that assumption."


Oh, excuse me, is this supposed be a joke? We all remember all those Microsoft’s statements about how serious Microsoft is about security in Vista and how all those new cool security features like UAC or Protected Mode IE will improve the world’s security. And now we hear what? That this flagship security technology (UAC) is in fact… not a security technology!

I understand that implementing UAC, UIPI and Integrity Levels mechanisms on top of the existing Windows OS infrastructure is a hard task and it would be much easier to design the whole new OS from scratch and that Microsoft can’t do this for various of reasons. I understand that all, but that doesn’t mean that once more people at Microsoft realized that too, they should turn everything into a big joke? Or maybe I’m too much of an idealist…

So, I will say this: If Microsoft won’t change their attitude soon, then in a couple of months the security of Vista (from the typical malware’s point of view) will be equal to the security of current XP systems (which means, not too impressive).

Edited 2007-02-16 01:45

Vista and games ?
Clearly you have not tried any.
Vista sucks at games.
34% frame rate loss ?
No thanks, I will stick with XP on my games machine.

Vista and games ?
Clearly you have not tried any.
Vista sucks at games.
34% frame rate loss ?
No thanks, I will stick with XP on my games machine.

Clearly you haven't tried any or you'd realize that that figure does not apply in all cases and is dependent on the hardware and drivers used. Look around the net and you'll find reviews showing some games running faster under Vista.

ATI's Vista drivers suck at the moment, as do NVidia's I hear. Like I said, that should be fixed in a few months. In the meantime, the reports of diminished performance are game/GPU specific. Not all games or all GPUs are affected. The games I play work fine on Vista.

The XP machine I use for games has an Nvidia card in it. I tested a few games, COD, COD2, Battlefield2, Enemy Territory. I quoted the 34% as that is what is globally accepted is the slow down, but to be honest, Vista destroys all games that uses OpenGL.

Enemy Territory is unplayable, it is down to 1 or 2 fps !
This will NOT be fixed in a few months, as it was a concious decision by Microsoft to cripple OpenGL under Vista.

The XP machine I use for games has an Nvidia card in it. I tested a few games, COD, COD2, Battlefield2, Enemy Territory. I quoted the 34% as that is what is globally accepted is the slow down, but to be honest, Vista destroys all games that uses OpenGL.

This isn't universally accepted. It's popular among Vista detractors. Reality shows that the results are dependent on the game/game engine, the hardware, and the drivers.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=18

Enemy Territory is unplayable, it is down to 1 or 2 fps !
This will NOT be fixed in a few months, as it was a concious decision by Microsoft to cripple OpenGL under Vista.

It is not Vista that is destroying performance, but the immaturity of the available drivers compared to their counterparts on XP which have had 5+ years of optimizations.

Microsoft did not cripple OpenGL, nor was this their intent. Vista, like XP before it, accelerates OpenGL via Direct3D rather than having a totally unaccelerated software renderer as in previous versions of Windows. Also like previous versions of Windows, Vista supports ICDs so IHVs can provide an accelerated OpenGL implementation that takes advantage of their hardware's native features. Vista continues support for the XP driver model, so an XP ICD may be used without the DWM. A Vista ICD model has also been provided to enable native OpenGL acceleration with the DWM enabled.

Vista's driver model is brand new, and brings features such as GPU virtualization, resource sharing, scheduling and virtual memory. This requires the creation of new drivers by IHVs. Gaming performance is a recent goal for IHVs. They have previously, and still are in many cases, focused on stability and correctness so their hardware can be used by OEMs. OpenGL was only added to their driver distributions during the RC stage of Vista, and is thus one of the newer components, and likely less optimized than D3D 9 components which have existed in some state since the beginning.

NVIDIA and ATI publish release notes, and maintain archives of their drivers. You can examine those to see what their primary goals were and when components like Vista OpenGL ICDs were added. NVIDIA has also commented in several articles online about their slowness in getting performance drivers available, and have gone to an at least monthly release schedule.

NVIDIA on driver progress
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=357

ATI on driver progress
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=367

Edited 2007-02-15 21:41

but sure in the link you provided, there are no plans between now and May to release OpenGL drivers from Nvidia....


However, the offical Microsoft line is this....

OpenGL can go through one of three paths in Windows Vista depending on how your computer is configured.

1. MSOGL - this is an implementation of OpenGL 1.4 that uses Direct3D under the covers to hardware accellerate the application.
2. Legacy ICD's - These are the ICD's that are available today for use on Windows XP. These will continue to work on Windows Vista, but will disable the DWM when they are loaded in to the process of the application that's using OpenGL. The reason for this is that Legacy ICD's operate directly on the GPU without going through Windows at all, and we have no way of redirecting application's output in a stable, predictable manner.
3. Windows Vista ICD's - this is a new path for 3rd party ICD's introduced for Windows Vista that will work in a way that is compatible with desktop composition. Essentially allowing direct access to the GPU for hardware accellaration, but then having the final surface that appears to be the front buffer to the application actually be a shared surface that gets composed by the DWM


None of the three is any good to OpenGL games

but sure in the link you provided, there are no plans between now and May to release OpenGL drivers from Nvidia....

NVIDIA has had a Vista OpenGL ICD for months now.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x86_100.64.html
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_100.64.html

None of the three is any good to OpenGL games

#3 is the best path for OpenGL games. The list is the same as what I said in my previous post. #3 offers the same access to natively accelerated OpenGL that you have in XP, and works with the DWM.

If you're playing a game, you're full-screen. Why do you care if DWM is disabled???


I don't know what actually happens with an XP ICD, since I'm not doing any gaming on my Vista computer with a i945GM. But you're right... stick with XP for now until DX10 games and cards start showing up. Why do you care so much about upgrading for gaming anyway, when you're so negative on everything else about vista? I think you have some psychological need for Vista to fail to see a glorious Linux uprising. What does it mean when you need to constantly harp on your competitor's often minor flaws in order to even have a chance of success? That you don't yet have a satisfactory product, perhaps?

Nope, you read me all wrong.
I do not Vista to fail, I have been running it in various betas and release candidates for the last 3 years, and now I am running Ultimate on one of my test machines.

I "need" to run Vista, I will need to support it because of my work, so I have to have a machine with it installed.

However, I am an avid gamer, and I also need to have a games machine around. So, at the minute, it is a machine with XP on it. It will have to remain XP until Vista gets sorted out and runs my games at the correct frame rate.

Now, like I said, I have 2 machines with Microsoft products on them, I also have 4 other computers, one is a Mac with OS X on it, one has Solaris and DesktopBSD, dual booting, and the last 2 use Linux, Ubuntu 6.10 and Suse 10.2.

I do not like dual boots, and do not like virtualisation, and out of all the systems I have, I prefer them to be Linux based.

BUT...

To sum up, I would not like to see Vista fail, because if it was to fail, there would be less money going into my pockets. I want it to work, so I can replace XP on the machine that is installed on with PCLinuxOS maybe.

"Vista and games ?
Clearly you have not tried any.
Vista sucks at games.
34% frame rate loss ?
No thanks, I will stick with XP on my games machine."

Hmmm...
According to ExtremeTech.com's Will Vista Run Your Games: The Final Word article, Vista runs games just fine. http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2090572,00.asp
"So let's break it down: Has Vista got game?
The basic answer is that yes, Vista is a pretty great OS for gamers. "

Edited 2007-02-16 00:31

If you use a mac, this won't matter to you. Good. Then please go use your mac and be happy. OSX had it first? Bully for OSX. Go use your Mac and be happy.

Thank you for your permission! I'm so gratified that I have your permission to upgrade to a Mac instead of the latest crapware from Microsoft. I'll have to upgrade my hardware eventually regardless, right? So why not upgrade to the latests offering from Apple, who have shown themselves able to combine the best hardware and software package?

--bornagainpenguin

I find it amazing that this post was rated down. Could you please READ the warning that pops up when you try to rate down a post!?! It says that "This feature is to report comments that are offensive, inflammatory, off topic, or otherwise in violation of the OSNews forum rules[...]".

I fail to see where joshv wrote anything that can be interpreted as anything along such lines!

I disagree with the author on the subject of Windows Vista (but NOT on the inappropriateness of the contribution by John Doe), but I will not accuse him of abusing the forum. That's ridiculous.

Cheers
A/V

-calling OSNews editors desperate
-calling the article "poorly written, content-free crap" and "sophomoric"

I happened to like the article--it may not all have been "new" or "original", but I found the presentation entertaining and insightful. But even if I had hated the article, I wouldn't have resorted to name-calling. (At least not without somehow backing it up with concrete examples.)

Edited 2007-02-15 22:02

As for the editors, I said they should never be so desperate for content that they'd promote this sort of content. If that's calling the editors names, I apologize.

As for the article, I stand by my words.

Can you provide me with some 'concrete examples' of the insight you gained from this article?

calling the osnews editors "desparate" and the article "content-free crap" is NOT offensive. it's no *personal* attack. "poorly written" etc. is about the work delivered in the form of this article. and, c'mon, "desparate" is not insulting. at least it's not listed as pejorative in my webster.

i was called an "asshole" and other names by a poster called grumpy, and he was voted up to a "3" within minutes while i was voted down to 0/-1 .
and now YOU give ME a break! this really smells like anti-windows militia to me. you can be as rude as you want, as long as you vote for osx or linux. and i even do vote for linux, i just thought osnews did a really bad work on this article. as noam chomsky says, granting freedom of speech to your friends is nothing, democracy starts when you grant it to your worst enemy!

Well someone had to say it ...

Does anyone know how good the API's for connecting into aero are? Are we going to see some neat 3rd party software?

Yes, they are very good. You will see some cool stuff come out. Google "Yahoo Messenger for Vista."

The new Graphics APIs are all tied to .NET right now. I sincerely hope that they come out with unmanaged versions soon, so that the third parties who write the real workhorse applications (i.e. Adobe and MSOffice) can build on top of it, since none of these people are going to actually go over to .NET.

"What exactly do you people want?"

Originality?
Insight?
Good writing?
News?

It's allegedly an urban legend.

However, I must admit it'll be different to unprove the statement, so one could correctly claim that the lack of solid evidence suggests it is a legend.

OTOH - it took approx. 15 years for Bill Gates to deny having said it, and that suggests he did say it. Though the explanation could be he didn't know of it until later, and only denied it when the story grew really big. In that case it's a classic case of poor strategy.

Oh f'in seriously, get off your damned high horse.

OSNews links to TONS of articles. The links are based on USER SUBMISSIONS. Once in a while, a shitty article makes it through. You could choose NOT to read it or comment about the article itself. Instead, you come to the site and attack the editors. Real smooth.

When a crappp article makes it through, I can always count on one thing: that some asshole like you will be waiting to criticize. Thanks for adding your condescening crap to this thread.

Your post is inadequate in two ways: (1) you use foul language and insult me personally. (2) the article might have been a user submission, but osnews is an EDITED site (hense the word "editor"), and a "special contributor" presented as such is not just a user.

osnews is an EDITED site (hense the word "editor"), and a "special contributor" presented as such is not just a user.

1. Thanks for modding me down for opposing your nonsense.

2. You and I and everyone else knows that OSNews is a volunteer site, and the "editors" are not "editors" as much as gracious people who donate their time to keep the site rolling. Too much editing makes this more a magazine and less a community.

Go ahead and insist I'm wrong, but I assert that it only highlights the fact that you misunderstand OSNews for what it is. I know that if I choose to write an article, they would publish it.

I wasn't particularly happy with the article either, but that's no reason for me to turn it down. I did try to edit out many of the, um, unfriendly words, but I guess one slipped my mind. Oh well.

OSNews is open for submissions from readers, and this poses a problem: barely anyone can actually write. I am a style junkie, and about 99.9% of the user submitted content would not pass my own standards; however, my standards are way too high (not even my own drivel gets passed my standards). This makes it very hard for me to judge articles , actually.

So yes, I make mistakes. As I always say: if the article is crap, just discuss its subject, but ignore the actual article. Difficult for many, I know.

Come on, Thom. In many other forums, articles like this are posted by readers intent on trolling for the exact sort of replies this one has generated. I am sure that "John Doe" is gleefully gloating over the haul his troll has brought in.

To allow an anonymous reader to post a comment to an article is one thing, especially when those comments can be modded up or down by other readers as they see fit. To post an article from an anonymous "John Doe" that is such a thinly-disguised troll is quite another.

Edit: spelling

Edited 2007-02-16 00:24

i voted you down because you called me an asshole. that constitutes a reason for voting someone down by the osnews rules. i don't know where you are from, but in most european countries, this constitutes a criminal case.

as for how osnews define themselves, i have nothing to add. the whole appearance of the site never hinted at a (self-organizing) community site (like digg) to me. calling oneself "editor in chief" and stuff... c'mon. i might have been in error. i really don't care anymore.

Hold on, hold on--what exactly defines "being a journalist" here? No seriously. Just because you have an article posted on a website, it makes you a journalist? What distinguishes being a journalist from being a blogger, from commenting on a forum, for that matter? Many of the most insightful things I have ever read have been buried in the nooks and crannies of responses to articles, whereas many of the articles written by "journalists" that I have read in my life have been huge rants full of logic holes.

The internet has and will continue to blur the line between what we have come to know as "journalists" and "normal people". This is a good thing, imho, even though it sometimes requires you to sift through crap. But complaining just because someone used the word "bullshit" and wrote in an off-the-cuff style...give me a break!

Edited 2007-02-15 22:10

Whats wrong about the author being emotional? This editorial is clearly meant to reflect his personal experience and opinion. Did you really expect a professionally written and researched article?

I counter that it is exactly Apple's use of open-source technologies as foundations that allows them to spend more time polishing those other parts of the system that need polishing.

http://www.apple.com/opensource/

Apple doesn't really use a closed proprietary model. They only use it to some extent. Microsoft is also changing it's development model - I believe they are somewhere in the middle of the transition (it's a slow process no matter the size of a company, and they started to switch in the late 90'es - according to internal mails).

"Vista runs fine on 512 megs of RAM."

The same way XP "runs fine" on a 128 MB system??

I was using RTM for a while on my laptop with 1gb, compared to XP it was a painful experience so I can't imagine how one can say it "runs fine" with only half of that available.

If you want to run Vista comfortably you need 2gb of ram in your PC. Period.

PS. I'm talking about running as in using the system AND working with applications, not staring at the desktop.

You must have driver problems. I know heavy office users and they do fine on 512megs RAM.

I have ran XP on P1 with 128(later 256) and it ran slow but fine doing server duties.

I can't wait for reviews of Windows Home Server.

While it's true that many of drivers are/were still in beta I don't think that was the problem here. My laptop is nowhere near high-end (Turion64 2ghz, 1gb ram, GeForce 7300) but it meets Vista premium requirements and all it's hardware components were auto detected.

Like it or not - Vista with Aero WILL use more ram (eats up about 0.4-0.5gig after bootup) and if you have only 512 it will use your virtual memory quite often after launching even some medium-sized app and having standard stuff in the backgroung (like a music player, IM, that kind of stuff).

Of course you can turn Aero off, cut back on some services to save memory but... what's the point then? When XP runs faster, use less memory and can perform same tasks (were talking about office-type work not playing Crysis in DX 10), hell if you install some theme it WILL look better than Vista without Aero.

That's because we all want the computer from Minority Report.

Everything until then is crap.

Edited 2007-02-16 01:03

You're essentially right. However, some studies have shown that an environment that's pleasing to the eye can make users perceive it as having better usability, and be more tolerant of it on the whole, e.g. willing to wait around a bit more for a task to complete. Also, animations as visual cues can help aid the perceived "friendliness" of an interface, so the end users are likely to feel more at ease. (I'm getting this from the book "Interaction Design" by Jenny Preece et al, pp. 143-4, if you're wondering.)

I think this may be what the author was getting at when he said that most people just care about the eye candy, it's not their job to know about anything else.

Hmm, what Linux apps have you used that made the whole system freeze? In my experience it is far easier to use xkill to kill any graphical app in Linux than it is to kill apps in Windows--you just run xkill, click on the misbehaving app, and it dies, and does so immediately, instead of having to wait forever as in Windows.

1. open opera with missing plugins
2. open azureus and search for java in a directory with missing executables.
3. changing a tcp/udp port# on amule and then save
4. nautilus Cut/Paste operation over cifs share to windows server 2003
5. other applications

If not driver related, this is probably related to the handle limit. which I believe was extended on Vista, but one of your apps could be leaking them.

There's a registry key that controls this limit, but I can't find instructions on how at the moment.

I get this on XP too, where resources get used up and I find that right-click no longer brings up menus, dialogs no longer come up, apps launch without menus, etc, and this remains until I close down some apps. And yes it sucks. I've never seen such on Macs.