StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Until there's a game out that I really want to play that's DirectX 10 and by extension Windows Vista only, Microsoft can suck my ass. Has anyone had anything good to say about Vista yet?

Vympel wrote:Until there's a game out that I really want to play that's DirectX 10 and by extension Windows Vista only, Microsoft can suck my ass. Has anyone had anything good to say about Vista yet?

I like it so far (I've been using it daily for some time)

As I mentioned in a couple of Vista threads already, I'm using it and have no major issues (infact, I don't think I can even remember a minor issue with the release version), and while it might not have any hugely revolutionary user stuff, the interface improvements are sufficient for me to make it painful to go back to XP. It just feels like a much more polished OS.

Don't really care about the entire DRM scare - if you don't have any DRM files the issue is moot - its just an inert system (or not so much if you're using WMP as your media player - which isn't the worst thing in the world mind you - but there are far better options).

Overall I'm pretty satisfied with Vista, but then I've got it for free with MSDNAA, so it might not be such a good comparison for some. In any case I would find someone downgrading to XP on a new computer strange and, in all likelyhood, stupid (unless the drivers are absolutely craptacular, but even that should solve itself in a few months max for new hardware, and especially for hardware used for new Vista systems, ie. anything coming out in the future).

I've played around with Vista a bit.

I'd say it's better than XP, and I'd recommend it over XP, but I don't know if it's worth $250 and it seems rather bloated (RAM requirements for example).

However, while the programmers did a good job with the GUI (pretty visuals), the interface designers are retarded. Microsoft should hire some Apple rejects; heck, even some Linux designers, because the inconsistent interface irritates me greatly. The next button says Next and is in the bottom right, the back button is a round blue ball with an arrow in the top left? Who the heck thought of that?

And some things like the folder icons feel like Linux builds I've used.

I've used Vista every day since the start of February, and aside from some Nvidia driver problems (nothing show stopping), I've got no complaints. Actually, after using Vista at home, I hate using XP at work.

Worth $250? Well, this is one of those issues in which you Americans can all go fuck yourselves. Microsoft is charging something like €399 or €299 for the Vista Home Premium version here, which translates to roughly $450 or $400 something like that. So in effect Micro$hit is trying to make Europeans subsidize American adoption of Vista.

I'm not going to pay that kind of extortionate sums for something that is really going to be ready only after a year or so when there starts to be more apps and games and other things for it.

Edi

Really?

I mean we can get Vista Home Premium OEM for £75.

Vendetta wrote:Really?

I mean we can get Vista Home Premium OEM for £75.

Most major stores sell it at the usual £200+ mark, though. There are far fewer places selling such discounted copies that the average person is going to notice, not that many will care since there is general apathy to Vista globally and people know their next computer will have it preloaded (which they assume means free).

Vendetta wrote:Really?

I mean we can get Vista Home Premium OEM for £75.

A full version or an upgrade from XP? Because the upgrade versions are nothing more than an invitation to get your ass fucked hard and deep. The supposed upgrades would, according to description, upgrade an XP install with data etc intact, but what they actually do is nuke the system and install a fresh copy, but they require the XP beforehand. Full versions cost the aforementioned arm, leg, kidney and one eye for good measure compared to WinXP Pro.

Edi

You can upgrade-in-place or do a "clean" install if you want to with the upgrade editions, IIRC. Even the "clean" upgrade preserves your old data - it moves all the old system directories to Windows.old.

phongn wrote:You can upgrade-in-place or do a "clean" install if you want to with the upgrade editions, IIRC. Even the "clean" upgrade preserves your old data - it moves all the old system directories to Windows.old.

Tell me, how many customers of the total can manage to do that without screwing themselves in the ass? Judging by the number of support calls we get about getting the most basic things on an established system like XP to work, not many. Which means that people are going to have to pay for the full version unless they like to take chances with their data above and beyond the usual results of their own ignorance about just running a system. Many don't.

It's different for the competent geeks, but they make up a relatively minuscule part of the total market, which is what MS is gunning for.

Edi

Edi wrote:Tell me, how many customers of the total can manage to do that without screwing themselves in the ass? Judging by the number of support calls we get about getting the most basic things on an established system like XP to work, not many. Which means that people are going to have to pay for the full version unless they like to take chances with their data above and beyond the usual results of their own ignorance about just running a system. Many don't.

WTF? You just ignored my point that the upgrader knows to handle user-data and leave it well enough alone. The only difference between the upgrade edition and the full edition is that with the full edition you can do a totally clean install (i.e. wipe the hard drive and repartition) and with the upgrade edition you need an OS installed already and it does the "in-place" install that preserves settings.

Edi wrote:

Vendetta wrote:Really?

I mean we can get Vista Home Premium OEM for £75.

A full version or an upgrade from XP?
Edi

Full version. It's an OEM version, so you don't get any phone support on it from microsoft, so it's dirt cheap.

The end user version is £200 or so.

Regarding upgrade installations, whether Joe Muppetuser can find their data again afterwards largely depends on whether it turns up in their My Documents folder, or in an archived version of said folder somewhere in the archive folders under Windows.old.

In the latter case, 90% of people won't find those documents without help, because they simply don't know about folder structures, they have just saved all their documents in the default folder Word suggested.

The default folder for Microsoft Word is in %USERPROFILE% (\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\My Documents in XP), which is automatically migrated over to the Vista equivalent (\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents)

phongn, sorry, I got some of the stuff I'd read mixed up. Point conceded on that score. But it still doesn't mean that dealing with Vista is straightforward by any measure.

Here's the series of the Register's first impressions of Vista:
How to install a Vista upgrade on any PC
Vista first look: Bugs and confusion
Vista security overview: too little too late

Based on those and some of the support calls we've gotten at work, seems like the OS works, but is far too much of a hassle at this point, never mind being expensive as all fuck. But the news about being able to do a fresh install off an upgrade disc is welcome news.

Edi

Sorry Edi, but the second (review) article's problems are mostly bullshit.
Lets look at the third page where he lists most of them:

Return to sender

Here's how mine went. First, my computer is intolerably noisy all of a sudden. The fan on my graphics card (nVidia GeForce 7900) now runs continuously. It's supposed to come on to cool things as needed, but now it never shuts off. Probably, it's a device driver problem. Or possibly, the Aqua Aero desktop uses so much of the card's resources that the fan simply has to run continuously. In any event, I'm not listening to this bloody thing for much longer. When my Vista reviews are finished, I'm going back to a dual-boot Linux/XP system.

My wonderful audio system isn't working properly, either: that is, my Creative X-Fi card and expensive surround speaker system. And this is a real pity, because Vista is supposed to have benefited from a great deal of attention to its audio capabilities. Too bad I can't enjoy them. The centre speaker is dead, and it's the most important one. The satellites are a little, how shall I put it, echo-ey. The centre one has the clarity and the satellites add an illusion of being in a large space, and provide balance. Well, using Media Centre, I tested the speakers and each one sounded the tone indicating that they'd passed. But the centre one is still dead at all other times. Maybe it's a driver problem. Maybe not. I simply recall that my audio system worked beautifully under XP. And now, it doesn't.

There is an irritating little row of pixels in my very expensive and very pretty LCD display that blinks white to black whenever the taskbar is hidden. The blinking stops whenever the taskbar is visible. I know, probably a driver problem. But Linux and XP didn't have it.

Ok, driver issues. Not nice, but come on, not like we all didn't expect at least some of them, and he's got nVidia and Creative (who bungled their Vista driver launch) - don't see how this is MS's problem, especially since it will go away in a month or two, and if you aren't ready for at least some driver issues you can always buy a new Vista box which (theoretically) shouldn't have them. With just a few tweaks of his configuration he wouldn't have any issues (ATi instead of nVidia, something with decent generic drivers instead of overpriced Creative crap).

Now for another little irritant: immortal craplets. There are two. One is the Vista Security Centre. I have disabled it. I have shut it off in Services. I have tried to shut it off in Msconfig. It won't die. Every time I boot, the craplet pops up and demands to be enabled. But if it really is disabled, then why am I seeing the bloody thing? And there's another immortal craplet: one that tells you that you've "disabled important startup programs", like the Security Centre, for example. I've tried to kill this ridiculous thing too, with no joy.

Right, because checking the box that is a "wink, wink" way of telling the computer not to bother you ("I will monitor my own <whatever>") is so hard. Let's instead try to kill a part of the system's defenses. Real smart.

And msconfig was always intended as a tool to test stuff out and not as a permanent solution.

So, one craplet pops up demanding to be enabled; you exit that, and a different one pops up telling you that you really ought not to have done that. Now, my definition of malware is pretty straightforward: malware is any code that causes my computer to behave in a way I don't intend, or any code that prevents my computer from behaving in a way that I do intend. Thus the Vista Security Centre is, quite simply, malware. I won't put up with this nonsense any longer than I'll put up with a dysfunctional audio system, or a noisy fan that never shuts up for one second.

And how about a few decent utilities? Yes, thank you for the DVD burner and thank you for the screenshot tool, and for the very basic photo and movie editing kit. But how about a decent text editor, for God's sake? Would it be so difficult to give it a little of the magic that Kwrite has got? A spell checker perhaps? The ability to clean spaces? A little colour-coded action for us HTML homebrewers, so we can see simple typos, like forgetting to close a tag? Is that too much to ask?

And here we run into that little fact that MS is a monopoly. There is a video interview somewhere on Channel 9 that explains this in detail, but the gist of it is that MS would be sued for mucho $$$ if they bundled a non-crap text editor. And if he needs those features, he can always get one of the multitude of freeware editors that support it. I will grant him the fact that Windows don't have an builtin systemwide spelling checker - that would have been nice.

And how about a file wipe utility? Is that too much to ask? And how about a little encryption software? For email, and for individual files. Oh, Bitlocker is fine, but there are files one doesn't want decrypted whenever the volume they're on is mounted. Is that too much to ask?

Again, monopoly, hence, no, yes, no, yes. Plus there is EFS, which protects the files as long as the account isn't compromised.

And there's more. Little things, really. Firefox is unable to make itself the default browser; my SSH client from Anonymizer won't install; my attempts to apply security patches to Word 2000 fail ("the requested operation requires elevation"); the logout screen now has so many options it needs a pull-down menu, and it defaults to "sleep" when "restart" is the action which users know is the most common, most important - indeed, most therapeutic - one they can take on a Windows box.

Bullshit on the FF default, even if the install failed for some reason there are at least 3 ways of making it default. For the SSH client - guess what, tools that depend on lower level systems break on major OS releases, nothing new here. As for Word, I honestly don't know, but I'm guessing that there is a way to workaround the problem as there is for almost all privilege problems (for example, running the patch from a elevated cmd prompt). Considering how well sleep works under Vista, unlike XP, I can't really fault them for making it default - and the restart comment is so '90ies.

I won't even begin to detail the security and privacy issues in Vista, as they are meat for an entire article...which is coming soon.

Cant wait if the same bullshit author is writing it.

So, there's our first look at Vista. It does benefit from a lot of good ideas, many of them Apple's, of course, but good nevertheless. It simply doesn't work very well, unfortunately. There are serious problems with execution; it's not polished; it's not ready. It should not be on the market, and certainly not for the outrageous prices being charged. Don't buy it, at least until after the first service pack is out. Don't pay to be a beta tester. ®

Here, I'll actually agree with him in part. I don't think Vista is worth 200+$ over XP, however it is good that it came out and should phase out XP with new systems. Upgrading? Dunno if it is cost effective in my opinion, but if you can get it cheap/free it is defiantly not a downgrade like some of those articles try to show.

I think you completely missed the point of the article. Even if those problems aren't entirely MS's fault, they are still there for the end-user to deal with. Joe sixpack who goes out to buy Vista can and will be faced with problems he shouldn't have to deal with, especially not considering how much MS has hyped this launch.

Excepting drivers and perhaps the Word issue, his other complaints only show his stupidity and aren't things that the common user would have problems with. Come on, trying to kill the Security Center like its some piece of malware instead of using proper, simpler methods to make it stop?

And while MS has hyped the launch, Joe Sixpack, if he has any brains at all, should buy either a new computer that is certified to be Vista compatible or should wait a few months for the driver situation to stabilize. Pretty much the same advice worked back when XP came out.

There are legitimate Joe Sixpack problems, but you'll find very few of them in this article as opposed to quite a lot faux problems created by a self appointed power user who's acting like a bull in a china shop (or a linux fanatic )

I know that Greene exaggerates some of the things, but he's on target on a lot of issues. And you're vastly overestimating the capabilities of Joe Sixpack. They will NOT buy new computers or do any of the other things they should do until they've tried and fucked things up with their old inadequate rigs and bothered tech support no end and bitched how nothing is ever their fault.

The good thing is that as long as the connection to the user's premises is working correctly, I can essentially tell Joe Sixpack to fuck off and bother somebody else (the vendor's tech support for whatever is causing problems).

Vista is something like 4 or 5 years behind schedule already, so MS really doesn't have that many excuses to go around. I don't have anything against Vista per se, upgrading is a natural part of the IT world. But there are limits to what level of incompetence can be forgiven.

I won't touch Vista until at least one SP is out.

Edi

Edi wrote:I know that Greene exaggerates some of the things, but he's on target on a lot of issues. And you're vastly overestimating the capabilities of Joe Sixpack. They will NOT buy new computers or do any of the other things they should do until they've tried and fucked things up with their old inadequate rigs and bothered tech support no end and bitched how nothing is ever their fault.

Hence why think more and more that you should have a license to use a computer (seriously, the amount of damage Joe Sixpack can unintentionally do with his machine is amazing - all it takes is clicking one pop-up).

Vista is something like 4 or 5 years behind schedule already, so MS really doesn't have that many excuses to go around. I don't have anything against Vista per se, upgrading is a natural part of the IT world. But there are limits to what level of incompetence can be forgiven.

I won't touch Vista until at least one SP is out.

Edi

Ok, it looks like your damning the OS without really trying it. The only real issue I have with Vista is Nvidia's drivers. I've got a couple of minor ones (sucky defrag gui, but that goes back to the lawsuits, probably, and NCQ kills disk performance, but that takes two seconds to turn off). Vista is superior to XP in almost every respect, and XP is no longer installed on my home machine.

And there's not an OS in the world Joe Sixpack can't fuck up. I've seen people fuck up Mac OS, and I'd hate to see the average person with Linux. MS has Vista as idiot proof as possible without going into full out Nanny-Mode (remember the first beta of UAC?). I'll grant that some things could have been done differently, but I'm not going to expect MS, or any other company, to make an idiot proof product.

The security center is irritating. It is supposed to increase security by requiring validation, but it requires validation for *EVERYTHING* to the point that the user just gets irritated and gets used to clicking to get rid of the box. I mean, you have to validate to RENAME A FOLDER. Argh.

That is UAC and not the Security center (thats the UI for telling you that something is wrong with you AV, firewall, anti malware). And you have to validate if it is a shared resource, like for instance Program Files, but not if it is a data directory that you own - and guess why that is a good idea. And no, after the initial setup phase, you shouldn't be seeing many prompts.

Hence why think more and more that you should have a license to use a computer (seriously, the amount of damage Joe Sixpack can unintentionally do with his machine is amazing - all it takes is clicking one pop-up).

Ahh, so because one company's broken, insecure operating system has created an internet security problem, you propose restricting people's freedom to use computer systems? Brilliant! While we're at it, lets also require people to buy a license for using a stove, since we all know that an inexperienced user of stoves can be badly burned by accidentally touching the fire/element.

Ok, it looks like your ****ing the OS without really trying it. The only real issue I have with Vista is Nvidia's drivers. I've got a couple of minor ones (sucky defrag gui, but that goes back to the lawsuits, probably, and NCQ kills disk performance, but that takes two seconds to turn off). Vista is superior to XP in almost every respect, and XP is no longer installed on my home machine.

Some OSes aren't worth messing around with, period. Windows ME, for example. In my opinion, Vista falls into the same category. Vista may offer improved security relative to XP, but it fails miserably from the standpoint of application compatibility. As I see it, the ONLY reason to use Windows is because of its application library, and when only 800 or so out of the hundreds of thousands of Windows apps run on Vista, it makes sense to use a different OS that offers better security and stability. Vista is probably a better OS than XP, but it is not good enough to warrant its use over superior rivals when it can't run most Windows apps!

And there's not an OS in the world Joe Sixpack can't **** up

Most people don't mess with configuration files, and the default installs of many Linux distros can be said to be secure out of the box, so you can simply give Joe Sixpack a copy of, say, Fedora, and forget about it. The chances of an actual security problem on a Linux desktop are infinitesimal, and furthermore, to negate this extremely remote possibility, every serious distro releases routine security updates, and there are anti-virus tools availible in the extremely unlikely event a Linux virus ever starts going around (IIRC here has been exactly one Linux virus in recorded history, and it was created in a lab, similiar to the experimental Mac OS X virus).

I've seen people **** up Mac OS

Mac OS was pathetic by the time it was finally replaced by OS X, so that is no suprise (unless of course you mean OS X). If you are referring to OS X, which is a completely different OS in almost every respect, well, OS X is also massively overrated, from my perspective. It doesn't have a malware problem, per se, but it does suffer from really poorly engineered interaction design, and a number of useful features in the OS are hidden out of site by retarded minimalist design decisions (similiar to the GNOME desktop). While OS X can trace its heritage back to UNIX, much of what makes UNIX like operating systems great is gone from OS X.

and I'd hate to see the average person with Linux.

I'd hate to see you on it, but you probably aren't even l33t enough to install Mandriva. Seriously though, many Linux distros can be extremely easy for even Windows n00bs to migrate to (something I've witnessed firsthand). Linux, additionally, is extremely secure relative to most other operating systems, and is very hard to break completely (I've managed to do this by overwriting part of the OS while attempting to install another on the same HD, something that if Joe Sixpack even attempted to do, he'd deserve the results he would inevitably wind up with).

MS has Vista as idiot proof as possible without going into full out Nanny-Mode (remember the first beta of UAC?). I'll grant that some things could have been done differently, but I'm not going to expect MS, or any other company, to make an idiot proof product.

In my opinion, the goal of an operating system developer should NOT be to "idiot proof" it, but rather to create a powerful tool that allows people to interact with a computer system and accomplish their objectives (in terms of entertainment, communications or productivity). This kind of "idiot proofing" that Windows has engaged in, in my opinion, apart from protecting users, turns them into idiots, by completely shielding them from the actual mechanics of their system. Thus, people get used to doing things in an idiotic way, becoming dependent on overly complex graphical configuration tools and loosing the ability to truly control their systems.

In the DOS era, I knew how to write a batch file, but by 2003, Windows, and its "idiot-proof" approach to UI design, had turned me into a n00b. I've spent the past four years relearning what Windows caused me to forget.

In my opinion, the goal of an operating system developer should NOT be to "idiot proof" it, but rather to create a powerful tool that allows people to interact with a computer system and accomplish their objectives (in terms of entertainment, communications or productivity). This kind of "idiot proofing" that Windows has engaged in, in my opinion, apart from protecting users, turns them into idiots, by completely shielding them from the actual mechanics of their system. Thus, people get used to doing things in an idiotic way, becoming dependent on overly complex graphical configuration tools and loosing the ability to truly control their systems.

In the DOS era, I knew how to write a batch file, but by 2003, Windows, and its "idiot-proof" approach to UI design, had turned me into a n00b. I've spent the past four years relearning what Windows caused me to forget.

What?

I don't know if you're doing this intentionally, but you're giving the impression that graphical utilities force people to do things idiotically. Graphical UI design isn't much different from a ton of -modifiers, except in the latter case there's some sort of wierd programmer-cred that goes with it. You want overly complicated? Go read some man pages and get back to me; memorizing switches is not a good interface.

Surfacing relevant features in a powerful manner and hiding the rest has always been a problem. Shielding the mechanics of the system is natural because many things are irrelevant. I do not want to know what memory location a subroutine is jumping to, nor what is being pushed to the stack. However, that is still hiding the mechanics of the system. And you know what? That's what automation is for: hiding irrelevance and allowing you to do what you want. Complaining that you forgot how to write batch files is silly; superior tools exist to automate workflow (ie Automator) exist and there is nothing stopping you from scripting in your favorite shell.

RThurmont wrote:Some OSes aren't worth messing around with, period. Windows ME, for example. In my opinion, Vista falls into the same category. Vista may offer improved security relative to XP, but it fails miserably from the standpoint of application compatibility. As I see it, the ONLY reason to use Windows is because of its application library, and when only 800 or so out of the hundreds of thousands of Windows apps run on Vista, it makes sense to use a different OS that offers better security and stability. Vista is probably a better OS than XP, but it is not good enough to warrant its use over superior rivals when it can't run most Windows apps!

How many times do you plan to trot out that baldfaced lie? There is a difference with software tested and certified to work on Vista and overall compatibility. In case your OSS addiction has totally ruined your brain, here is a hint: the first is a subgroup of the latter.