Critical Thinking

Have any of you tried Vista lately? I was a die hard XP user, believing all the hype spewed here and elsewhere about how bad Vista is. I waited until SP1 came out then went for the OEM of Vista Ultimate SP1. I was expecting loads of headaches which never appeared. I didn't get the UAC messages asking to confirm every single action, and very few of my applications were incompatible (those that were I loaded onto an XP virtual system). My machine isn't top of the line but there were no compatibility issues. I actually kind of like the OS. Does that make me bad? Not really. I'm just an average user (I wish I was paid by MS or some other big corporation for those doubting Thomases who think I might be firmly in the MS camp) which brings me to the point that reporters/commenters here have a responsibility to present a fair view of the OS. MS may be an evil corporation to many, but they are just that, a corporation supplying what the market wants and trying to make a profit - the basic pillar of business. I know many here are Linux fans, believe me when I say Linux has come a long way, but its not ready for the mass market (i.e. us dumb users) and without wider game support among developers, it will never be more than an enthusiast OS. Maybe you should give Vista another try before bashing it so much.

Jolly Roger because I'm going against the popular opinion.

here we go again

The same comments keep appearing constantly. Most (not all) of the peole who bad mouth Vista have not used it for an extended period, or have used it at work where it's usually locked down by sysadmins.

I have had Vista since it came out. I fix people's PC's as my job and knew that what was going to happen was people would end up with Vista so i needed to know it inside and out. The easiest way was to use it as my main OS. I hated it for the first 3 weeks cause MS did what they do best....move everything. Now i have no problem with it. Yes, i have a much more powerful machine then i did 2 years ago but the machine i had 2 years ago would run Vista better then a minimum spec xp machine (233mhz with 64MB RAM). Anyone want to try using that specwith an xp SP3 (or even SP2) install?

For the people complaining about Vista and saying they won't upgrade cause XP works fine: then don't upgrade!!! XP is still supported, however, if you buy a new machine then why use an old OS? (a new PC will probably use SATA disks, so make sure you have a floppy disk handy to install the SATA drivers - make sure the new PC actually HAS a floppy as well)

The simple fact is that Vista is to XP what 98 was to 95. Different, but largely the same. old hardware not working is something that is down to hardware manufacturers (the good ones will HAVE drivers that will work on Vista64 bit AND XP32 - Xyzel for example). The install routine is quicker and much easier. The file copying seems to take about the same time on XP and Vista, but vista has the nice feature of allowing you to select "do the same for the next 18 million items" - no more holding your finger down on Y to respond to XP's question each time.

As for DRM, like i have seen commented a few times, no one seems to have actually noticed any evidence of any DRM related problems. Can anyone provide any?

MS have dropped the ball in a lot of respects regarding Vista; IPX/SPX over Netbios is not supported in 64bit and the removal of HAL for Directsound is a biggie but the balance between positives and negatives is closer then a lot of people think.

And befpre any fanboys start having a go, I think linux is a very good OS just not ideal for me. OSX has it's place but it's not my choice because the software i want to run doesn't come on a Mac

Just a wee suggestion

My wife has a laptop with Vista. She has it because I found that it was not powerful enough for me to use after I bought it because it only has 1GB of memory - Its an HP supplied with Vista on it...

She likes to use it when we are away to play DVD's.

She has no real technical knowledge but she allows Microsoft Updates to download when she is online.

We are away last week in a different city, staying in a Motel with no internet (cheap place but nice actually) so we go to the shops and buy a DVD, come back to the Motel and insert it into the Laptop. The menu comes up and then MSMedia player complains that there is a problem with the DRM and shuts itself down. It suggests we download an updated driver of some kind if we are convinced that we have a valid DVD.

I'm afraid I got really angry with MS at that point. They had disabled the DVD playing because their own drivers which they had loaded onto my previously working machine were invalid.

As it turns out, HP had a DVD playing utility included with their software so we enjoyed some peace and quiet whilst my son watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

MS must hate their users. Its the only explanation.

Which leads to the suggestion....

The IT profession should righteously shun people who work for MS like tax collectors. They look like normal people, but by working for MS they show that they are not worthy to be full citizens, merely a sleazy underclass.

So next time you are going through a stack of CV's.. Shuffle the ex MS people to the bottom. Ensure your son or daughter is made aware of the lack of humanity in someone who works for MS. This will hopefully limit their breeding...

@People don't like change && @Bunch of Whiners

I've said it before and I'll say it again -

Its not a case of people not liking change, its a case of people going for useability. Remember, thats why the hordes stuck with Windows instead of migrating to free Linux - they find the less mature Linux desktop environments harder to use.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks as I see it, is the new OS is a far bigger resource hog than XP. There is still CURRENT SPEC hardware being sold which simply can't support it.

My G/F's new laptop, sporting a Turion64 cpu and a gig of ram absolutely *crawls* with Vista (which it came bundled with from Acer). Theres probably nothing that bad about the OS, just its so slow as to be unuseable - and thats even with every possible unnecessary service disabled.