"There's lots to like in the newest version of Windows. Vista's look is stunning, the OS should be more secure, and finding things is often easier. But Windows wouldn't be Windows without those aspects, big and small, that just drive you nuts with frustration. Here's our list of Vista features that just make us wonder, 'What were they thinking?'"
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Member since:2006-10-10
True, they have to pay the 70k employee payroll somehow.
Still, it's bogus. XP is probably a 90+% complete product at this point. It has a decent track record, more and more companies are supporting it. Few problems with older hardware. Haven't heard too much about iloveyou's and Blaster variants in the past couple of years.
Vista is a step backward just to force people to upgrade hardware needlessly. Even with UAC whining like my 3 year old, you still need to run the standard security apps as you do in XP. Integrated search can be done in XP with 3rd party software. All that fancy "flip" and ugly UI garbage can be done with more 3rd party apps, I'm sure. DX10 is really the only reason for home users to get Vista.
Fact is, this is probably the first time that Microsoft released a version of Windows and the majority of users said, "Why?"
Member since:2006-01-02
What makes you think you still need to use security apps? I mean, you could assume that because you've been using security apps before and they've found things, but how do you know 'a priori' that you still need that stuff?
There are lots of under-the-hood enhancements in Vista. What else is an OS really supposed to have? Remember, it's a platform for people to write software on. It won't happen immediately, but surely when Vista takes over there will be software that uses its features fully and won't run on XP. That represents progress because that software will probably be doing things in a better way:
perhaps it will use the new visuals,
perhaps it will be safer,
perhaps it will use the transactional features in the filesystem to safely modify its files without corruption,
perhaps people's problems will be solved automatically or more quickly through the new diagnostics frameworks in Vista.
But what is an OS really supposed to do? What do you expect that is not in Windows and cannot be gotten by addons? If you think of something, is it generally useful and non-conflicting with other requirements?
Member since:
2005-07-06
Well, that's the point of most of the Software industry. New versions of just about any software product are a means of funding the activity of that company. Otherwise, they would have to switch to a subscription service. There really is no compelling reason to buy Vista. However, the reality is that Microsoft has to make money, so eventually XP will be deprecated and the unsupported. This is an endless game. And you have to admin, it's been 6 YEARS! Microsoft cannot afford to freely fix XP forever (just like 2000, 98, etc before).
Incidentally, even though you're not paying, this is true in the Free (libre) software world. Evetually you're current version of Linux slides into "unsupported" status and you have to make a choice - upgade or risk obsolescence. I know a company that still uses Fedora Core 1. It worked fine for them, but they eventually had to make a choice to upgrade or risk using unsupported software (no security updates for instance).