Windows Vista, the best thing since sliced bread?

Mr Spoon · 23 Feb 2006 at 15:43

Otacon said:
This post brought to you by, a noob.

Oh the irony.

Otacon are you implying that im a noob? Ive been building PCs before most people even knew what they were. im also a qualified c++ windows developer so i think i know a thing or two about windows and computers. :rolleyes:

anotherF · 23 Feb 2006 at 15:54

I wouldnt worrie to much about DRM and os's. I can see it becoming built into the hardware before long!

Otacon · 23 Feb 2006 at 16:07

Mr Spoon said:
Otacon are you implying that im a noob? Ive been building PCs before most people even knew what they were. im also a qualified c++ windows developer so i think i know a thing or two about windows and computers.

Then I would expect someone such as yourself to step away from such useless, sweeping comments like:

Mr Spoon said:
I hate the sound of Windows Vista.

And particualrly:

Mr Spoon said:
Its designed by newbies for newbies.

Care to quantify those comments like the seasoned techie you claim to be (which is exactly how you didnt come across, from your post)?

You can keep the rolleyes btw.

Emlyn_Dewar · 23 Feb 2006 at 16:13

My cd drive wouldn't install the sliced bread OS so I'm sitting on x64 right now... I imagine I'll upgrade system around Vista time and take the plunge, until that time I'll just continue to be confused by tripe I read on the net.

Mr Spoon · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:06

Otacon, we clearly have different opinions about Vista, personally I've not heard anything or feature about it that i like. To me it sounds like a resource hogging, security paronoid, bloated OS. - which is perfectly suited for newbies.

"designed by newbies for newbies" was a bit of a joke, obviously OS developers are not newbies, but as most people know, MS ship out a lot of software with bad code.

Otacon · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:18

Mr Spoon said:
Otacon, we clearly have different opinions about Vista

Clearly? You wont find any opinion of Vista from me on these forums, so I'm not sure how you can claim that

Mr Spoon said:
personally I've not heard anything or feature about it that i like. To me it sounds like a resource hogging, security paronoid, bloated OS. - which is perfectly suited for newbies.

Not sure I understand that last part - are you saying that 'newbies' need bloat? And most of what's being said about Vista was also said about XP. Surely being a software developer, you know better than most that people should wait until they see the finished code/product before judging (knowing what you do about software testing & debugging).

Mr Spoon said:
"designed by newbies for newbies" was a bit of a joke, obviously OS developers are not newbies, but as most people know, MS ship out a lot of software with bad code.

Again, you're going to have to back that up with something tangible.

Sorry, but at the moment you're coming across as someone who doesn't really know as much as you claim (enough to warrant a rolleyes apparently). I'm not having a dig here, I'm giving you an opportunity to justify your position - feel free to take it.

barnettgs · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:33

NathanE said:
Yes but if you read the whole paragraph...

You'll be left thinking "so what exactly was his point about it being a power hog then?"

Terrible article.

People love reading biased critique about Microsoft though so the media are simply supplying for that demand.

Agreed but Apple only offer one OS version for all hardwares. I was reading recently about 5 years old mac, which seemed to run faster with each major release of Mac OS. See the link below:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/why-pros-use-mac.htm

Opposite is true with Microsoft especially with XP and Vista running on the old hardware (slower).

No matter how he sounds but he does give you a basic idea of what it's like using mac. I can agree with him especially that I started using Mac at work's recently.

However, regardless of this article, I'm not at all convinced because I regularly fix friend's computers and often find them bloated up with all the additional toolbars and spywares like mysearchbar etc. Add to that, poor system hog softwares like Norton and the likes.

I know it may be user's error but windows' system files and registry exist to be taken advantage of from many 'free' softwares with useless additional toolbar softwares and registry enteries. In the end, depending on which softwares/sywares, it's difficult to do fix or remove so without messing up.

I'm sure it would be more or less the same core in Vista but correct me if I'm wrong.

Mr Spoon · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:46

Otacon said:
I'm giving you an opportunity to justify your position - feel free to take it.

I could do but i cant be bothered

Otacon · 23 Feb 2006 at 17:52

Surprising, that

Slam62 · 23 Feb 2006 at 18:04

barnettgs said:
Agreed but Apple only offer one OS version for all hardwares. I was reading recently about 5 years old mac, which seemed to run faster with each major release of Mac OS. See the link below:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/why-pros-use-mac.htm

Opposite is true with Microsoft especially with XP and Vista running on the old hardware (slower).

No matter how he sounds but he does give you a basic idea of what it's like using mac. I can agree with him especially that I started using Mac at work's recently.

However, regardless of this article, I'm not at all convinced because I regularly fix friend's computers and often find them bloated up with all the additional toolbars and spywares like mysearchbar etc. Add to that, poor system hog softwares like Norton and the likes.

I know it may be user's error but windows' system files and registry exist to be taken advantage of from many 'free' softwares with useless additional toolbar softwares and registry enteries. In the end, depending on which softwares/sywares, it's difficult to do fix or remove so without messing up.

I'm sure it would be more or less the same core in Vista but correct me if I'm wrong.

Your very probably correct actually, if you know what not to do your ok but if you dont then you will very quickly enf up with a system thats in a mess.
One of the things that should be changed is the ease of dodgy toolbars and spyware being inadvertantly installed.

If you read the inquirer, you'll find that ms are running some sort of road show to train all their vendors to say the things that click your (the customers) buttons and sell you stuff whether you need it or not. This is the way in a market economy (which i dont think is bad btw) just buyer beware. :eek:

Mr Spoon · 23 Feb 2006 at 18:06

Otacon, i am who i am, my opinions are my opinions, if you have an opinion about my opinions then that is your opinion.

NathanE · 23 Feb 2006 at 18:21

Slam62 said:
One of the things that should be changed is the ease of dodgy toolbars and spyware being inadvertantly installed.

Vista does that. Vista also only allows signed software to be placed into the various Registry locations that automatically start programs at boot up.

Otacon · 23 Feb 2006 at 18:32

Mr Spoon said:
Otacon, i am who i am, my opinions are my opinions, if you have an opinion about my opinions then that is your opinion.

"MS ship out a lot of software with bad code" is not an opinion, it's a statement you made as a software developer. I've asked you to justify it, in that context.

If you wish to explain it as an opinion, then you have to provide something that can be argued subjectively. That sweeping statement doesn't cut it.

Slam62 · 23 Feb 2006 at 19:50

do you think its not true then, it cant be that difficult for a company the size of ms to find the resources to fix the security holes, is software code really that difficult to decipher. The major resources are spent on new products that are 'better' than the old ones to keep the cash flowing in.

I can see their point, why spend time and money fixing something for free, after all what do microsoft actually guarantee about their product. They dont even guarantee it will work at all do they, let alone be secure reliable etc
I cant help thinking about the billions of dollars microsoft have lying around and thinking they could afford to spend a bit more on quality.
Its just a shame theres no proper competition and probably never will be.

Etaqua · 23 Feb 2006 at 20:50

Slam62: actually, since the release of Mac OS X and the huge success of the iPod, Macs have started getting more popular with the young generation. I currently have a few friends who are going to be making the switch.

If that is true everywhere, Microsoft might have to start increasing their quality and appeal or forfit their gigantic market share.

NathanE · 23 Feb 2006 at 22:05

Slam62 said:
do you think its not true then, it cant be that difficult for a company the size of ms to find the resources to fix the security holes

One word. Vista.

xyphic · 24 Feb 2006 at 00:07

Slam62 said:
do you think its not true then, it cant be that difficult for a company the size of ms to find the resources to fix the security holes, is software code really that difficult to decipher.

'Software code' can be very difficult to decipher, especially if it's poorly documented. Windows (be it 2000, XP or Vista) is an immensely huge piece of software. We're looking at millions of lines of code. It *will* have flaws -- these may be simple bugs (i.e. something doesn't work the way it's supposed to) and some may be more fundamental design or even requirements issues. It's the latter that are the more difficult to fix.

If someone reports a flaw in your software, first of all you have to work out where it is. That means somebody knowledgeable must investigate how the flaw manifests, and the conditions under which it appears. If it's a design/requirements issue rather than a simple bug, the correct behaviour must be specified. Then the bad code has to be found (which can only really be done by someone who knows about the code -- and believe me, nobody knows how *all* of Windows works... the human brain just isn't big enough), and someone has to fix it. All this takes people away from new development.

You may argue that design and requirements deficiencies shouldn't happen. I agree to an extent -- some of the security holes are pretty fundamental. Unfortunately, they also tend to be from legacy code, written when Microsoft wasn't quite so big and maybe their processes weren't quite so good. I suspect that most Windows development now is rigorously specified, designed and tested. As I said, it's usually the legacy stuff that's the problem.

The solution? Re-specify and implement the legacy code. In most cases, that's not a commercially viable thing to do -- re-engineering something is usually complex and generally has little gain, so the decision is usually that any bugs in it will be fixed as and when they occur. The ideal scenario for us as users would be for Microsoft to completely redesign their operating system, but again that's a heck of a lot of effort for relatively little gain. Plus it'd take more than a few years to do.

Microsoft has obviously realised that the security model in their previous operating systems has been lacking, and they've taken the decision to re-engineer it. This is a Good Thing -- it's likely to be *much* better for a rewrite. Sounds like many of their other legacy systems have been reworked too.

I'd finally like to mention the cost of Vista. This is a particular bugbear for me. £80 is not a lot of money for an OS. £150 is not a lot of money for an OS. Vista will likely weigh in between these two amounts. You just have to break down the cost to see exactly how good value for money it is. I've had XP for a few years now (let's call it 2). I paid £80. That's £40 per year. That's 10p per day. For the amount of use I get out of it, that's incredible value for money. Just think about the games you think nothing of spending £40 on. You get a couple of weeks of use, and that's it. Done.

The only concern I really have is that eventually I (the user) will be forced to upgrade, as support for XP runs out. But that's progress for you.

zetec452 · 24 Feb 2006 at 07:31

xyphic said:
The only concern I really have is that eventually I (the user) will be forced to upgrade, as support for XP runs out. But that's progress for you.

Great post.

In particular your last point. I would imagine that MS will have to offer extended support for XP. It happened with Windows 2000 when they tried to ditch supporting it.

They have far to many machines on XP just to write it off after 3 years.

stoofa · 24 Feb 2006 at 10:37

I'd love to know just how many of the people in this thread have actually used Vista - how many of them have used an upto date version of it.
So I'm lucky, because of my beta test status I get access to the new beta builds as they appear so I'm usually running something similar to the "in-house" build at Redmond.

The usual mix of basic anti-MS posts and points have been made.
I really don't see how anybody can class £80 as a lot of money for an OS.
Even if you were only to get three years use out of it it's still only cost you £27 a year which really isn't that much is it?
Sure the "Ultimate" edition of Windows Vista will be more than £80 but will you need it?
As with WinXP - 90% of home users simply do not need WinXP Pro and the only reason they are using Pro over Home was that it was easier to find an ISO for it on their favourite file-sharing program and I'm afraid those people are in no position to complain about the price of the OS.

There seems to be plenty of mis-quoting going on and general lack of Vista knowledge floating around too.
Maybe it is because there hasn't been a public beta release of Vista yet so people are being spood-fed the usual rubbish that many anti-MS sites do feed close to the release of a new OS.
We had the same with WinXP and how this would cause everyone to stop using MS OS's and switch to MAC's & Linux - yer, and the latest market shares show that really happened.

There is a lack of information about the different versions of Vista that will be making an appearance - which again isn't helping and is just fuelling speculation.
From what I can tell there will indeed by around 8 different versions of Vista ranging from the absolute basic to the "includes everything" and you will have to pay varying amounts of cash.
What is interesting is that there is a very good chance that the versions that don't require any form of activation - those that are designed for the corporate world will have certain features missing and disabled.
The average home user is not actually going to want the "Corporate Edition" as it will have DirextX missing and no ability to install it.
It's an interesting idea, keeps managers happy as corporate users can't play games and keeps MS happy as even when the version is pirated most people won't want it.
As for the OEM license situation and having to buy a new copy of the OS if you switch your motherboard....
Once again taken out of context and actually if you are running an OEM version of the OS right now and you've actually removed the valid piece of hardware you bought at the same time as the OEM OS from your machine then legally you should have bought a new copy right now under the current T&C's.
Didn't buy your OEM OS with a significant piece of hardware? Your vendor has already broken the license agreement.
This is actually MS putting something that was in the small print into large print - but of course they can't win, damned if they do and damned if they don't...

So before the paranoid among you get all excited wait until you've had the opportunity to really use Vista before you place those tin caps on your head and tell us that Vista is the end of the world.
You told us all the world was ending with WinXP and guess what - it didn't.
For those with the attitude that Vista is "bloated" or a "newbie" OS - please may I suggest you actually use it before you pass any judgement and I really mean use it, not a passing glimpse at two screen shots and an out of context review from www.asusualwehatems.com

I'm sure Vista will have it's flaws - all OS's do (yes people, even the MAC's you are all going to run to once Vista is released and all previous versions of Windows will magically cease working).
Win2k was amazingly good out of the box if you took you time with it - considering it was never marketted for the home user there can be no complaints from people who decided to buy it for home use and certain no complaints from people who stole it.
WinXP was based on some 90% of the same code - Win2k Version 2, so the OS was matured, ready for the general home user and well supported by the slow software houses and hardware manufacturers.