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I definitely must check Vista one day to see what I have missed. But I'm in no hurry.

I tried it yesterday and found myself thoroughly rankled. It is slow, klunky, and the pop-ups asking you "Do you want to do this?" drove me nuts. I will stick with W2K for Windows needs.

My in-laws new machine has Vista, and while initially vaguely impressed (not as slow as I expected) it soon ate the UDF filesystem on a backup DVD I'd written for them with their photos on. Luckily, I had the files somewhere else and could recreate them. However, I'm going to stick with multi-session DVD-R instead of DVD+RW for backups (which I should have done anyway...)

Vista is NOT a good product and there is definitely NO WAY it is less problematic than XP.

The only way sp1 can improve Vista is by changing the driver model, removing DRM, and cutting down on latency.
That is not going to happen.

You people who rushed out and bought it have no-one but yourselves to blame.


BTW - has anyone else noticed that zdnet seems to be nothing more than a Microsoft advertising agency ?

Edited 2007-04-27 07:55

>by changing the driver model

There is no real reason to be fully backwards compatible with the old model which was problematic.

>Vista is NOT a good product and there is definitely NO WAY it is less problematic than XP.

I didn't have any crashes or performance problems. I didn't like the UI or the absence of using Hotmail via pop3, but that's another issue.

>has anyone else noticed that zdnet seems to be nothing more than a Microsoft advertising agency ?

No. Thank you for noting.

I agree, Ive been using Vista since Feb and really have had no issues with it that were actually microsofts fault. My creative card wasent workin too well at first, but read around and find someone not having too many problems with creative with vistas launch. Havent had any crashes, performance is not really noticably different from XP (though I admit with a dual core and over 2gb of ram nearly everything runs the same..)

Only Issue I can lement on, is that goddamn legitimacy check it does. nothing pisses me off more than purchasing a Microsoft OS for the first time since 98, and rebooting one day into my computer being locked saying the key is in use when I have the box in my hand. I was one irate screaming customer at the non english speaking rep I talked to. but they did straighten it out very quickly, so im good now..

has anyone else noticed that zdnet seems to be nothing more than a Microsoft advertising agency ?

Yes. Have YOU noticed that the person you were replying to is ronaldst, for whom the (Bill) Gates Infallibility Principle is a Law of Physics. You aren't going to change his mind* on that score (*charitably assuming he has one).

Vista is NOT a good product and there is definitely NO WAY it is less problematic than XP.

You may not find it a good product. But I do. Most people who use it on a regular basis find Vista good. It must be you(TM).

The only way sp1 can improve Vista is by changing the driver model, removing DRM, and cutting down on latency.
That is not going to happen.

Of course they're not going to happen as they are mostly political wants. No one cares. The driver model is fine. And DRM is there to stay. They'll be needed to watch our Blue-Ray and HD DVD movies later on.

You people who rushed out and bought it have no-one but yourselves to blame.

Yet this only seems to affect people that have never used Vista. lol

BTW - has anyone else noticed that zdnet seems to be nothing more than a Microsoft advertising agency ?

I thought it was more like a GNULinux/Novell/Steven Nichols outfit.

Geez, if you want to troll at least have some substance.

You obviously don't work as tech support for a windows oriented software company like I do, daily fielding dozens of complaints related to Vista use and performance.

"Most people" doesn't seem to include most people.

We try to get as many as we can back to xp and the only resistance we encounter is the fact that MS is locking people out of it at the retail level.

Resistance is futile!

You obviously don't work as tech support for a windows oriented software company like I do, daily fielding dozens of complaints related to Vista use and performance.

"Most people" doesn't seem to include most people.

So it means that only people that work in the "windows oriented software company doing daily fielding dozens of complaints related to Vista use and performance" know what's out there, right?

We try to get as many as we can back to xp and the only resistance we encounter is the fact that MS is locking people out of it at the retail level.

You should try coming up with like real arguments. Unless your aim is to troll.

Interesting, you say you work for a Windows oriented software company (developing software for Windows) and you provide technical support; you say that you hear these complaints on Windows Vista.

Do you see the disconnect? Your company produces products for Windows, customers are complaining about problems with Windows Vista and obviously your software.

Who do you think is to blame? *ding* do you see that maybe there are incompatibilities and its YOUR responsibility as the organisation providing the software to update the software as to allow the end user to smoothly run the software on Windows Vista. Don't blame Microsoft for your companies lazy attitude to providing support for customers running Windows Vista.

"

"

Who's "most people"? I've used it on a few completely different systems and at best it's 'ok' but at worst it's a painfully slow, memory hogging hunch-back system.

I'm not the greatest fan of XP, but I'd happily run XP over Vista any day (and I'd even find XP a pleasure in comparison).

That said, I'm sure one day Vista will be a beast of a system for home users

Who's "most people"? I've used it on a few completely different systems and at best it's 'ok' but at worst it's a painfully slow, memory hogging hunch-back system.

I bought a copy of Home Premium. Installed it on my AMD 3200 with 1 Gig Ram and an Nvidia 5200* (128Meg). Its not a fast system, but I had no problems with anything aside from Creative sound drives which I had to download from the site. The graphics worked well, the system is fast and responsive, I had no problem installing anything except for the Silver Lining Game** I installed :-

AVG anti-virus
JDK 1.6
NetBeans 5.5
OpenOffice 2.2
Firefox
Opera
Macromedia Studio
Navicat
Aptana
Adobe reader
DosBox
Filezilla
Doom 3
Chronicles of Riddick
Quake 4
others I forget

Initially I had the UAC come up to allow installing the software but I have not had it popup for months now. Vista has been a success for me. Others have not been so fortunate. But take a look at what happens when something as small as a Ubuntu 6 month refresh happens. You get all kinds of people complaining about not being able to install, hardware not found, etc, etc. Vista has been much better than that and its a huge improvement over XP.


* I have subsequently installed a 7600GT to play Quake4, Doom3, COR

** The problem was the 5200 does not have drivers from NVidia only drivers supplied by Microsoft. The new graphics card and Nvidia drivers did the trick.

You may not find it a good product. But I do. Most people who use it on a regular basis find Vista good. It must be you(TM).

Right, which is why most of the press Vista is getting is overwhelmingly negative. Clearly, there is an anti-Microsoft conspiracy out to besmirch the name of The Greatest Software Company on the Planet.

And yet according to you and your confederate Tomcat, people use Microsoft products because they love them. You can't have it both ways.

Of course they're not going to happen as they are mostly political wants. No one cares. The driver model is fine.

Yes, when Gates Almighty says he should do something, It Must Be Done. But when anyone contradicts, they are expressing "political wants".

And DRM is there to stay. They'll be needed to watch our Blue-Ray and HD DVD movies later on.

Only if you're fool enough to buy them.

Your posts should carry a Govt. Health Warning: "You won't know whether to cry or laugh yourself to death."

BTW - has anyone else noticed that zdnet seems to be nothing more than a Microsoft advertising agency ?

No I haven't. What I have noticed on zdnet is that there are a lot more people promoting linux in those forums than there are Microsoft. If you look at it that way then zdnet is more of a linux advertising agency.

Actually, all that means is that there are more people that are enthusiastic about Linux than about Windows. That is consistent with what I see myself every day. Most people use Windows because they have to (or think they have to), not because they like to. Most Windows users I know don't like the OS.

Yeah, those "poor people" who "rushed out" and bought it and actually like it, poor poor them. They should have installed the latest shit linux-dist with shitty package management, outdated memory leaking applications, no games, ..., instead, those rules! That's why everyone uses them! Shit brown desktop ftw!

"Vista is a very good product."

It might be good if you run it on a mainframe, and don't care that MS owns the computer, not you.

It might be good if you run it on a mainframe

What? Windows is non-existent in the mainframe world, where Linux dominates as much as Windows dominates the desktop. IBM has dozens of System Z mainframes in the field that are running over 10,000 Linux servers apiece. On System P, Linux is growing 6 times faster than AIX, and systems with at least one Linux LPAR average over 30 LPARs per system, 10 times the average for AIX-only systems. Linux is clearly the workload consolidation platform of choice.

Windows is only a good platform if you don't care about power-efficiency, cooling, floorspace, utilization, manageability, reliability, availability, and serviceability. So it's a decent desktop platform.

[q]Vista is a very good product. A lot less problematic than XP.[/p]

Yup and here is the proof:

http://kadaitcha.cx/vista/dogsbreakfast/index.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkeC7HpsHxo

And if you might encounter problems running Vista, this cute guy has the ultimate solution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVbf9tOGwno&mode=related&sea...

:-)

I can't wait to see what decisions they take with Service Pack 1 later this year.

They'll decide to patch it up, that's what SP's are for.

Or rather what goes into the next version of Windows / "real longhorn".

When in doubt, insult people you don't know.

I am not a Microsoft Fan (I run Kubuntu on my desktop machine), but I work for a company that develops Windows software.

Several friends of mine have moved back to XP SP2 after install and use several weeks their new Windows Vista.

I do not think Vista is a bad product, but I think the most people does not need (and do not like) the eye-candy features that comes with Vista.

My friends now run XP SP2 and they are happy because they have more free memory for their applications, more free graphical resources for their games and a more elegant and serious UI (the classical Windows look'n'feel).

I don't understand your viewpoint.

Evidence has been clearly presented that Vista has been a relative success for Microsoft, yet you resort to childish quip like: "Wait a second Bill bought how many copies of Vista!!!"

1.) just because people are comfortable with XP and don't see a reason to upgrade to Vista, it doesn't say anything about its quality. I can't remember how long it was before I switched to the 2.6 series kernel in Linux, and how long it took to switch from FreeBSD 4.8.

2.) When numbers come into confrontation with thousands (sic) of blow-hard editors, the numbers win.

Edited 2007-04-27 09:03

just because people are comfortable with XP and don't see a reason to upgrade to Vista, it doesn't say anything about its quality.

Maybe not, but if true, stories of increased Linux adoption because of Vista, Dell switching back to preloading XP, and queues of customers waiting to return copies of Vista, speak volumes. Volumes of volumes.

Evidence has been clearly presented that Vista has been a relative success for Microsoft,

If you're referring to this "evidence", no it hasn't. Microsoft gets its newest OS preinstalled on computers as a matter of course, and have you ever tried getting another one (even another version of Windows) installed instead?

So what you're doing is equivalent to saying "Cars have been a relative success for car makers, ergo GM must be doing well." Of COURSE cars are going to be a successful product for car makers, especially (for example) relative to toasters if they don't actually make toasters. And yet Toyota is now the largest car maker in the world, pushing GM out of first place, according to some reports.

I was mostly joking of course Mr. Gates didn't run out and buy a bunch of Vista copies. The strong sales stem from a number of factors. The xp to Vista coupons helped sell many copies of Vista(great marketing). The fact people know it is the platform for the next few years and MS will fix it's minor problems surely helps. Last it offers major improvements in security and aesthetics. In short I found it amusing to make fun of sales figures they are pretty dry stuff thought I'd lighten it up.

Edited 2007-04-27 10:25

Essentially giving something away is NOT great marketing...

It's a luxury, and one MS only has because of it's monopoly (or virtual monopoly depending upon who you are speaking to).

Well I appreciate your attempt at lightening it up!

If you're referring to this "evidence", no it hasn't. Microsoft gets its newest OS preinstalled on computers as a matter of course, and have you ever tried getting another one (even another version of Windows) installed instead?

You seem to be using a strange new definition of "success"; wherein, a product is only a success if YOU approve of how it ends up in consumers' hands. You don't like Microsoft's lock on the desktop market so, in your mind at least, Vista isn't a "success" because consumers have no alternative.

While that may be interesting in your mind, the computer industry weighs the success or failure of a product based upon its market share and impact on the industry as a whole. Very clearly, Vista is on its way to replacing XP. This fact is supported in its sales numbers.

Look, if you don't like the reality shared by the vast majority of people (myself included), you might try inventing your own parallel reality where Windows is a failure and Linux/Mac reign supreme. Because that's the only way that your argument could hold any water.

You seem to be using a strange new definition of "success", wherein a product is only not a success if people can choose other products. You like Microsoft's hold on the desktop market so, in your "mind" at least, Vista is a success because customers are forced into accepting it.

While that may be interesting in your "mind", industry weighs the success or failure of a product based on its market share in a free market relative to that of other product and impact on the industry as a whole - and on the latter subject, since noone in their right mind would implement software as buggy and as badly written as Vista, and since UNIX is the model followed by everyone else, Windows/Vista have no influence.

Vista is on its way to replacing XP. Microsoft supports its customers and "obsolete" products the way a noose supports a condemned man.

Look, if you don't like the reality shared by the vast majority of people (myself included), you might try inventing your own parallel reality where Windows and other enforced monopolies are a success and products which compete on their own merits are a joke. Because that's the only way that your argument could hold water.

MS counts Vista sales like satellite-radio counts subscription numbers.....inventive, to say the least.

I'd like to personally call shenanigans on the entire article. The fact that it's referenced from MS's own website should be a huge red-flag.

And someone show me a side by side comparison of pre-installed Vista, off the shelf Vista, and Vista PC's upgraded to XP. Yes, I said "upgraded".

Think about how many copies of Vista Dell brought before they switched back to XP and also don't forget that while demand for OSX/*nix is increasing, the number of 1st time PC buyers is also increasing.

That's because Windows bashing is cool, of course everyone buys expensive macs which haven't got leopard yet, and of course all students, corporations and gamers are so longing for Leenucks to save them.

"Haha, look, i have a fat penguin in this window and a cat which chases the mouse pointer!! This sure beats WoW!"

You are realling comparing freedom of choice for OSes to freedom of choice for cars? Wow, that's REALLY reaching dude.

No, freedom of choice of power for cars. You've got Oil, Oil or Oil, and that's about all that 99% of people are going to use. There is no choice in the motor industry. Electric cars, LPG, Gas and Fuel Cell cars have deliberately been put back, and made inconvienient and impractical.

You're right.

That is not comparible to freedom of choice for OSes though.

No, it's comparable to freedom of buying a PC with your choice of operating system. Not OSes themselves, because there is choice there; but the majortiy is not going to buy a petrol car solely to immediately convert it to LPG. Having Vista on every new machine removes the practicality of choice from the majority. Why are there no car-lots that give you the option between LPG or Gas for each car? Why, because the oil companies have a monopoly very similar to Microsoft.

you're an id**t because Superfetch is the new memory managment in Vista and if you disable it then the performances will decrease!
Defrag runs in low I/O priority and it doesn't affect the system performances and so if you disable it then your performances will decrease because your Hard drive is not defragmented.

Edited 2007-04-27 11:34

But why even have Vista if you're just going to disable everything? Why not just use XP?

Why is this modded down? Honestly, give me one good reason.

Please stop complaining about moderation. It will even itself out eventually and then your comment will be meaningless.

I honestly don't give a shit anymore. The moderation system here doesn't work for this site. Things only "even out" half the time.

Face it, most of the user base here is shit. The moderation is shit. It's akin to what slashdot was not so long ago. The mentality is sick.

Go ahead, mod this down rightfully so. At least I can make this post comfortably knowing that it will get modded down appropriately.

Edited 2007-04-27 17:48

Well in this case it's working, the OP's comment is at 1, which is normal. Considering it's not quite on topic, and gives advice which according to another poster is unwise, I fail to see what the issue was...

You think it's rough on you? Try being someone who, after an objective and thorough search for a third-party OS, consciously chose Windows over all the other options. Try being someone who thinks artists should be able to get royalties for their work, and who thinks programmers should be able to make a living for their code.

I've been called a Nazi, a capitalist, a communist, a monopolist, an anarchist, a fascist, and a scientologist for having these positions. And that's just here; I've been called other things on other things that I can't say on a family-friendly forum.

Edited 2007-04-28 12:09

All 3 services run low priority but generates enormous harddisk activity which also sucks battery.

Afterall superfetch is a new technology, may be in the future it will work better for me.

Regarding using XP, I simply liked aero. Isn't it enough reason?

I have got a "Slow" (for Vista) machine with core 2 duo and 1 gb ram. I have removed the following bugs/services

1) Aero effects
2) Indexing
3) All animation/themes
4) Defrag auto
5) Defender auto
6) SuperFetch and ReadBoost whatever
7) Sidebar
8) Back/restore

Vista now runs ok, but for some reason I can see a lot of HDD activity, does anyone know which "features" I need to disable/remove for this? I cannot understand why is my HDD is being trashed when I am doing nothing?


P.S. Yes, I know I should use XP but I am currently travelling, so will do a reinstall later.

This allows Microsoft to manipulate it's reported quarterly profits by releasing part of it's reserves to hide slumps in sales.

I am not sure how to take your comments. You speak like an authority yet you don't seem to how revenue is reported or even what it is. Please look up 'accrual accounting' and timeliness (GAAP).

It does not matter how McSoft manipulates its figures it, the free market and people, will ultimately decide its fate.

And looking at Microsoft's rising profit the people are choosing Microsoft.