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 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?

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.

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.

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

"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 ...