Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:

Whether you want Vista now or not, that you will want it "down the road"
is a near certainty. The things that we are hearing right now ("I don't
have any plans to upgrade to Vista") are exactly the same things that we
heard when XP came out. The fact is that in the not too distant future,
there will be hardware and software that needs, requires or greatly
benefits from Vista. Plus, Vista is not simply XP with "eye candy",
it's a whole new OS from the ground up, and it's new features -- and
yes, the "eye candy" -- may become appealing in time, even if they
currently don't strike you as such. Bottom line, Vista is in your
future, no matter what you think right now.

That said, for the near future (next 12 months), the reverse is also
true: Lots of things don't work with Vista, and many things are new and
different and ... for now, "uncomfortable".

Therefore, it seems to me that anyone who is really "into" computers is
going to want dual boot, XP and Vista, for the time being. It's going
to be the best solution for the next 12 months.

Vista Home, I think, is going to prove to be pretty much useless and
shunned, much more so than XP Home. Vista Home doesn't have media
center, it doesn't have remote control, it doesn't have domain
networking, it doesn't have full NTFS security, in fact it doesn't even
have the Aero/Glass user interface (the "eye candy"). Scratch that.

Vista Home Premium upgrade is $159. But, from now until sometime next
year (at least Feb. 1st but not past March 15th), you can buy a copy of
Windows XP Media Center Edition for $109 (Newegg) and get Vista Home
Premium upgrade for FREE. Not only is $109 less than $159 (last time I
checked), but did someone say something about dual boot?

Another thought, in the past there have been absolutely tremendous
introductory deals when new versions of Windows or Office were
introduced. Typically, you bought the new version of Windows (or
Office)and you got stuff that was worth a lot more than Windows/Office
(like $300 to $800) "Free after rebate". The deals were so good that it
could actually pay to buy copies of Windows/Office that you didn't want
or need. I remember getting my first digital camera, a [then] $399
Fujifilm, "FREE" at staples with the purchase of one version of Windows
or Office. The deals were so good that I bought the introductory
bundles at Best Buy, Staples, CompUSA AND OfficeMax. Not for Windows or
Office, but for the "bundle deals". Now I don't know what's coming, but
I will tell you that I have Tuesday, January 30th circled on my
calendar, and I'm thinking that some of these stores are going to reopen
at midnight with special promotions (CompUSA in particular seems to go
for that type of thing). With both Vista and Office coming out on the
same day, I'm expecting some really major promotions.

Barry Watzman wrote:

> Whether you want Vista now or not, that you will want it "down the road"
> is a near certainty. The things that we are hearing right now ("I don't
> have any plans to upgrade to Vista") are exactly the same things that we
> heard when XP came out. The fact is that in the not too distant future,
> there will be hardware and software that needs, requires or greatly
> benefits from Vista. Plus, Vista is not simply XP with "eye candy",

A very odd statement to make. Even now, years after Windows XP was
first released, there is very little hardware and even less software
that requires Windows XP and won't work on Windows 2000. Furthermore,
many people - myself included - run Windows XP with visual settings
such that it is almost indistinguishable from Windows 2000.

So - Compatibility is not going to be an issue during the operational
lifespan of any PC being sold today. Eye candy is useless and ignored.
What exactly were we supposed to buy Vista for, then?

Even further: "from the ground up" is a completely misleading
statement. Vista is an evolutionary development from Windows XP, and is
equivalent AT MOST to the difference between Windows for Workgroups
3.11 and Windows 95. Yes, there were a lot of changes, but certainly
nothing approaching a ground-up rewrite, which is what you implied.

All I can say is that I have spent many many hours trying to install an
HSP 56 modem on an i810 chipset, in a desktop, under XP home and
whatever driver I try either refuses to install or gets lost on a
reboot. Think what it will be like under Vista or is it going to
suddenly support legacy hardware. I also have software that will not
run under XP but only runs under 98.

In many ways my 486 was faster and had more versatility under DOS and
Desqview. I would never attempt to run 21 CD drives under Windows, and
yes I know it had limitations which increased as the processors got faster.

Ian Singer


--


================================================== =======================
See my homepage at http://www.iansinger.com
hosted on http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=10623894
All genealogy is stored in TMG from http://www.whollygenes.com
Charts and searching using TNG from http://www.tngsitebuilding.com
I am near Toronto Canada, can I tell where you are from your reply?
================================================== =======================

In article <45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com>, Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>
Barry, have you gotten dual-boot to work with Vista???

I admittedly haven't tried too hard, but right now am relegated to a
third-party boot-switcher to go back and forth. My problems might be
compounded by having incorrectly using Partition Magic to divide an existing
hard drive into two partitions (apparently a requirement with Vista, unlike
XP), but I'd like to hear folks assert that dual-booting is, in fact,
possible.

Art

"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>
> Whether you want Vista now or not, that you will want it "down the road"
> is a near certainty. The things that we are hearing right now ("I don't
> have any plans to upgrade to Vista") are exactly the same things that we
> heard when XP came out. The fact is that in the not too distant future,
> there will be hardware and software that needs, requires or greatly
> benefits from Vista. Plus, Vista is not simply XP with "eye candy", it's
> a whole new OS from the ground up, and it's new features -- and yes, the
> "eye candy" -- may become appealing in time, even if they currently don't
> strike you as such. Bottom line, Vista is in your future, no matter what
> you think right now.
>
> That said, for the near future (next 12 months), the reverse is also true:
> Lots of things don't work with Vista, and many things are new and
> different and ... for now, "uncomfortable".
>
> Therefore, it seems to me that anyone who is really "into" computers is
> going to want dual boot, XP and Vista, for the time being. It's going to
> be the best solution for the next 12 months.
>

Well, Barry, I disagree. (At least as far as my work and home use is
concerned.) I have upgraded 3 of my home machines to Linux, and have moved
my work communication servers over to Linux as well. I see a point that at
work we will abandon Win 2K and XP to upgrade to a desktop Linux version.
Microsoft is and will continue to lose market share to Linux, and at one
point in the next few years there will come a tipping point to go for Linux
on the desktop at work and home. (Game writers will start to notice that
the market is there.)

Rich

I didn't do it on the machine I was testing Vista on (a Toshiba laptop),
but lots of people have. Setting up dual boot isn't difficult, but I'm
told that drive letter assignments can be a mess unless you do it right.
"Right" is to install XP first (standard procedure ... oldest OS
first), then to run the Vista setup program from XP. In that case,
Vista is supposed to use the XP drive letters. If you boot from the
Vista CD & run setup, you may end up with something very different, and
the drive letter of the actual OS drive can't be changed later.


Arthur Shapiro wrote:
> In article <45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com>, Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>> Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>>
> Barry, have you gotten dual-boot to work with Vista???
>
> I admittedly haven't tried too hard, but right now am relegated to a
> third-party boot-switcher to go back and forth. My problems might be
> compounded by having incorrectly using Partition Magic to divide an existing
> hard drive into two partitions (apparently a requirement with Vista, unlike
> XP), but I'd like to hear folks assert that dual-booting is, in fact,
> possible.
>
> Art

Arthur ,

I couldn;t figure out MSFT loader and didn't bother. I used VistaBootPRO
and it worked fine. I later tried EasyBCD and it worked fine too.
I have 2 drives - 1 with 3 partitions of XP
and another drive with both Vista 32 and Vista 64.

PS did you graduate high school in 1972 ? (classmate with same name)

"Arthur Shapiro" <art.shapiro@unisys.com> wrote in message
news:eivq6t$1493$1@si05.rsvl.unisys.com...
> In article <45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com>, Barry Watzman
> <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote:
>>Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>>
> Barry, have you gotten dual-boot to work with Vista???
>
> I admittedly haven't tried too hard, but right now am relegated to a
> third-party boot-switcher to go back and forth. My problems might be
> compounded by having incorrectly using Partition Magic to divide an
> existing
> hard drive into two partitions (apparently a requirement with Vista,
> unlike
> XP), but I'd like to hear folks assert that dual-booting is, in fact,
> possible.
>
> Art

In article <9vidnW0kO9UND87YnZ2dnUVZ_sWdnZ2d@comcast.com>, "- Bobb -"
<bobb@noemail.123> wrote:

>I couldn;t figure out MSFT loader and didn't bother. I used VistaBootPRO
>and it worked fine. I later tried EasyBCD and it worked fine too.

>PS did you graduate high school in 1972 ? (classmate with same name)

Thanks for posting that.

Negative on the classmate - I'm a 1967 relic.

Art

"Richard Johnson" <richj@REMOVE.THIS.tairedd.com> wrote in message
news:eivqli0521@news3.newsguy.com
> Well, Barry, I disagree. (At least as far as my work and home use is
> concerned.) I have upgraded 3 of my home machines to Linux, and have
> moved my work communication servers over to Linux as well. I see a
> point that at work we will abandon Win 2K and XP to upgrade to a
> desktop Linux version. Microsoft is and will continue to lose market
> share to Linux, and at one point in the next few years there will
> come a tipping point to go for Linux on the desktop at work and home.
> (Game writers will start to notice that the market is there.)

I seriously doubt it. As profits moves innovation and development. Which
kind of explains why Linux is always a day late and a dollar short. I
wish it wasn't so, but I don't see anything otherwise. :(

--
Bill

Barry.....still using my Fujifilm finepix1300. Grandson had it about a year
and returned it. :))

"Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
news:45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
> Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>
snip

> I remember getting my first digital camera, a [then] $399 Fujifilm,
> "FREE" at staples with the purchase of one version of Windows or Office.

<zwsdotcom******.com> wrote in message
news:1163093073.498052.205580@m73g2000cwd.googlegr oups.com...
> So - Compatibility is not going to be an issue during the operational
> lifespan of any PC being sold today.

In almost all cases, true.

> Eye candy is useless and ignored.

Sure, although there are some functional enhancements in Vista as well (just
as there are in XP vs. 2000).

> What exactly were we supposed to buy Vista for, then?

You... well... not much. But it's naive to think that a massive advertising
campaign on Microsoft's part won't drive *plenty* of people to upgrade.
There's a certain "threshold" effect whereby -- completely regardless of how
*good* a product may be technically -- once it achieves a certain percentage
market penetration, it just becomes the thing that *most* people buy without
even thinking about it. Look at XML... there's been many millions of dollars
poured into upgrading applications to support XML as a file format just
because XML has gotten so much buzz and hype that in many high offices "XML
support" becomes corporate check-list "need," even though realistically for
many people there's very little real advantage to having their files stored in
XML.

Not that this is a rant against XML -- I think it is a nice "upgrade" over
completely proprietary schemes -- just that I think it's a good example of how
enough advertising and publication convinces perfectly reasonable people they
"must have" something that, objectively, they often really won't gain any
additional benefit from.

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in message
news:4553a4b2$0$1345$834e42db@reader.greatnowhere. com...
> "Richard Johnson" <richj@REMOVE.THIS.tairedd.com> wrote in message
> I seriously doubt it. As profits moves innovation and development. Which
> kind of explains why Linux is always a day late and a dollar short. I wish
> it wasn't so, but I don't see anything otherwise. :(

It'd be interesting to chart the group to Linux revenue vs. time (in
percentage increases) vs that of Windows... I wouldn't be surprised if Liunx
is doing rather well.

There are, of course, people who feel that the "big guys" of Linux
distribution -- Redhat, Mandriva, Novell, etc. -- are just as evil as
Microsoft, but I think these are often the same people who don't quite realize
that, while writing freely re-distributable software is honorable and
certainly ought to be encouraged, obviously somehow you still need to make an
income to put food on the table and a roof over your head.

Barry Watzman wrote:
> Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>
> Whether you want Vista now or not, that you will want it "down the road"
> is a near certainty. The things that we are hearing right now ("I don't
> have any plans to upgrade to Vista") are exactly the same things that we
> heard when XP came out. The fact is that in the not too distant future,
> there will be hardware and software that needs, requires or greatly
> benefits from Vista. Plus, Vista is not simply XP with "eye candy",
> it's a whole new OS from the ground up, and it's new features -- and
> yes, the "eye candy" -- may become appealing in time, even if they
> currently don't strike you as such. Bottom line, Vista is in your
> future, no matter what you think right now.
>
> That said, for the near future (next 12 months), the reverse is also
> true: Lots of things don't work with Vista, and many things are new and
> different and ... for now, "uncomfortable".
>
> Therefore, it seems to me that anyone who is really "into" computers is
> going to want dual boot, XP and Vista, for the time being. It's going
> to be the best solution for the next 12 months.
>
> Vista Home, I think, is going to prove to be pretty much useless and
> shunned, much more so than XP Home. Vista Home doesn't have media
> center, it doesn't have remote control, it doesn't have domain
> networking, it doesn't have full NTFS security, in fact it doesn't even
> have the Aero/Glass user interface (the "eye candy"). Scratch that.
>
> Vista Home Premium upgrade is $159. But, from now until sometime next
> year (at least Feb. 1st but not past March 15th), you can buy a copy of
> Windows XP Media Center Edition for $109 (Newegg) and get Vista Home
> Premium upgrade for FREE. Not only is $109 less than $159 (last time I
> checked), but did someone say something about dual boot?
>
> Another thought, in the past there have been absolutely tremendous
> introductory deals when new versions of Windows or Office were
> introduced. Typically, you bought the new version of Windows (or
> Office)and you got stuff that was worth a lot more than Windows/Office
> (like $300 to $800) "Free after rebate". The deals were so good that it
> could actually pay to buy copies of Windows/Office that you didn't want
> or need. I remember getting my first digital camera, a [then] $399
> Fujifilm, "FREE" at staples with the purchase of one version of Windows
> or Office. The deals were so good that I bought the introductory
> bundles at Best Buy, Staples, CompUSA AND OfficeMax. Not for Windows or
> Office, but for the "bundle deals". Now I don't know what's coming, but
> I will tell you that I have Tuesday, January 30th circled on my
> calendar, and I'm thinking that some of these stores are going to reopen
> at midnight with special promotions (CompUSA in particular seems to go
> for that type of thing). With both Vista and Office coming out on the
> same day, I'm expecting some really major promotions.


I will add that anyone with a pre-vista dual core CPU will want Vista
because it is largely threaded to to take advantage of dual core. I am
running Vista RC2 on a D830 Intel dual core, not of the current Core Duo
technology, and Vista is blazing fast for routine OS operations. I've a
basic Radeon 600 GPU, not a heck of a lot better than an Intel 950, and
it runs the full graphical interface very well.

Outside of 'fast', Vista is not a whole lot of improvement over XP,
except that Media Center is built in.

Now Office is a must-have, again since it is completely threaded for
dual core as I understand. Again, from what I have seen of the new
Office, it is not much of an improvement, if any, over Office 97 -
except for execution speed which is blazing fast.

Q

I have bought more of them (Fuji 1300 digital cameras), in fact ... you
can get them on E-Bay for $10 to $20. Not exactly the $399 it once sold
for. But it's a great, basic, simple, quick digital camera for taking
E-Bay pictures and the like. Only 1.3 megapixel (although the quality
is comparable to most 2mp cameras), no optical zoom, fixed focus (with a
"macro" setting). But it takes **** good pictures for what it is, and
it's cheap, quick, simple. Still useful, even today. I now have 3 of them.


MikeG wrote:
> Barry.....still using my Fujifilm finepix1300. Grandson had it about a year
> and returned it. :))
>
> "Barry Watzman" <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:45536106$0$13663$4c368faf@roadrunner.com...
>> Here are some thoughts on Vista acquisition:
>>
> snip
>
>> I remember getting my first digital camera, a [then] $399 Fujifilm,
>> "FREE" at staples with the purchase of one version of Windows or Office.
>
>

Joel Kolstad wrote:

> > What exactly were we supposed to buy Vista for, then?
>
> You... well... not much. But it's naive to think that a massive advertising
> campaign on Microsoft's part won't drive *plenty* of people to upgrade.

MS's major OS sales have always been preloads, and probably this will
always be true. There is a spike in upgrades immediately after a major
release, but the truly big customers (Fortune 50 class) do not roll out
new OSes until they roll out new computers, and maybe not even then.

> Not that this is a rant against XML -- I think it is a nice "upgrade" over
> completely proprietary schemes -- just that I think it's a good example of how
> enough advertising and publication convinces perfectly reasonable people they
> "must have" something that, objectively, they often really won't gain any
> additional benefit from.

If XML delivered what its implementors usually promise, it would really
be a tangible benefit: open file formats accessible to anyone who
understands the schema. Of course, the application most people know
about is MS-Office, which uses trivial XML as a wrapper around opaque
proprietary binary objects.