On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:47:15 GMT, Kevin Weaver
<kevinkeithweaver@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I don't see how anyone can make that statement unless they have hands on
> with the final product which I take it you do by your reply.

There is a lot of literature available about the internata and certain
concepts of Vista - many of them even originating from Microsoft...

In my personal opinion, the real problems with Vista are much more
fundamental and frightening than the usual increased hunger for
resources, graphics- and CPU-power that are only to be expected from a
new OS - how for example do you like the idea of MS being able to
simply disable your Vista because they consider your computer as not
suitable for honouring the Digital Rights Management? A possible
scenario here is that someone hacks the drivers for your type of GPU
to bypass the DRM and for whatever reason there won't be a new
tamper-proof release of that driver (maybe the company is out of
business, maybe the GPU is not in the support cycle anymore, pick
yourself a reason) - MS claims the right and implemented the
mechanisms to disable all (in this example) graphics-drivers for that
specific model in Vista via Web, which would in this case render your
laptop useless for all practical purposes, as you cannot even change
the GPU...

>
> By this I take it we should just go back to a form of DOS correct ?

Not every critical statement about what a manufacturer tries to sell
you as the biggest invention since fire implies the wish to go back to
the stone age - the other extreme, a mindless urge for the newest
version or release of a product can be equally stupid too though,
still it's very common...


> I think It was better to have some form of xp Installed then get the
> Vista upgrade and Install It if you want. This way you have 2 ways to go
> not one.

The recent "Windows of choice" seems to be Windows XP Pro, as support
for Windows XP home will run out in 2 years, while XP Pro is supposed
to be supported for (if I remember correctly) 5 years from now - by
then we surely have a clearer picture about the "state of operating
systems"....

>
> [...]

T.C.

Recently MS announced that XP Home and MCE will have the same extended
support period as Pro.

See:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/p...WindowsMA.mspx

"T.C." <Devil505@spamfence.net> wrote >
> The recent "Windows of choice" seems to be Windows XP Pro, as support
> for Windows XP home will run out in 2 years, while XP Pro is supposed
> to be supported for (if I remember correctly) 5 years from now - by
> then we surely have a clearer picture about the "state of operating
> systems"....
>
>>
>> [...]
>
> T.C.

As I remember, this was all said about XP when it 1st hit the stores.
Everyone was saying it was this and that. Most of it was bad. But look
at it now. People adapted to it quick. Some were saying it took to much
cpu, mem, hd space, etc, etc.

I've Installed it and admit there are problems, XP, and I ran xp-pro,
still has problems and it's been out for over 5yrs. With a 3rd SP In the
works and another to follow. SP3 was to have already been out but vista
side-tracked that. NT 4.0 Had 5 Service packs. There are still problems
with it. But XP caused that to stop.

I found one big problem so far. It's running a Microsoft wireless mouse
6000. This will cause the screen saver not to work. I called MS And
there going to ship out a new updated mouse that will fix this. This is
not a cheap mouse. I paid 60.00 for it and they said no prob. It's on
the way.

I'm sure there will be many service packs or hot fixes in the future.
You have to expect that with any OS. Look at apple. They have more then
10 fixes the last time I've checked. That was a few months ago. I know
they have had a few more within the past few months for the overheating
on the Macbook. And the overheating problems were not fixed. They just
did a few "Band-aid" Fixes. The problems are still there waiting to show
there ugly faces again. And as long as they keep doing these so-called
band-aid's your warranty runs out. Then your on your own.

With so many company's making PC's your going to have hardware/software
problems. With Apple that makes there own hardware and software to there
own specs the major problems should be a lot less then they have. (By
hardware I'm talking about there ROM'S and such. They program there own
bios chips. Microsoft has no control over what the many PC Makers put in
there chips. I worked In QA For a major DVD/CD company. Our software
worked on a major amount of computers that are out in the field. The
home made systems, That another can of worms. There is always going to
be conflicts. When I did my black box testing they were mostly on dell
systems. No matter how large a company is. IE: MS in this case. Can't
test every system from every computer mfg. Unlike Apple can as they
_Control there own hardware and software_



T.C. wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:47:15 GMT, Kevin Weaver
> <kevinkeithweaver@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't see how anyone can make that statement unless they have hands on
>> with the final product which I take it you do by your reply.
>
> There is a lot of literature available about the internata and certain
> concepts of Vista - many of them even originating from Microsoft...
>
> In my personal opinion, the real problems with Vista are much more
> fundamental and frightening than the usual increased hunger for
> resources, graphics- and CPU-power that are only to be expected from a
> new OS - how for example do you like the idea of MS being able to
> simply disable your Vista because they consider your computer as not
> suitable for honouring the Digital Rights Management? A possible
> scenario here is that someone hacks the drivers for your type of GPU
> to bypass the DRM and for whatever reason there won't be a new
> tamper-proof release of that driver (maybe the company is out of
> business, maybe the GPU is not in the support cycle anymore, pick
> yourself a reason) - MS claims the right and implemented the
> mechanisms to disable all (in this example) graphics-drivers for that
> specific model in Vista via Web, which would in this case render your
> laptop useless for all practical purposes, as you cannot even change
> the GPU...
>
>> By this I take it we should just go back to a form of DOS correct ?
>
> Not every critical statement about what a manufacturer tries to sell
> you as the biggest invention since fire implies the wish to go back to
> the stone age - the other extreme, a mindless urge for the newest
> version or release of a product can be equally stupid too though,
> still it's very common...
>
>
>> I think It was better to have some form of xp Installed then get the
>> Vista upgrade and Install It if you want. This way you have 2 ways to go
>> not one.
>
> The recent "Windows of choice" seems to be Windows XP Pro, as support
> for Windows XP home will run out in 2 years, while XP Pro is supposed
> to be supported for (if I remember correctly) 5 years from now - by
> then we surely have a clearer picture about the "state of operating
> systems"....
>
>> [...]
>
> T.C.

T.C. wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jan 2007 02:47:15 GMT, Kevin Weaver
> <kevinkeithweaver@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>> I don't see how anyone can make that statement unless they have hands on
>> with the final product which I take it you do by your reply.
>
> There is a lot of literature available about the internata and certain
> concepts of Vista - many of them even originating from Microsoft...
>
> In my personal opinion, the real problems with Vista are much more
> fundamental and frightening than the usual increased hunger for
> resources, graphics- and CPU-power that are only to be expected from a
> new OS - how for example do you like the idea of MS being able to
> simply disable your Vista because they consider your computer as not
> suitable for honouring the Digital Rights Management? A possible
> scenario here is that someone hacks the drivers for your type of GPU
> to bypass the DRM and for whatever reason there won't be a new
> tamper-proof release of that driver (maybe the company is out of
> business, maybe the GPU is not in the support cycle anymore, pick
> yourself a reason) - MS claims the right and implemented the
> mechanisms to disable all (in this example) graphics-drivers for that
> specific model in Vista via Web, which would in this case render your
> laptop useless for all practical purposes, as you cannot even change
> the GPU...
>
>> By this I take it we should just go back to a form of DOS correct ?
>
> Not every critical statement about what a manufacturer tries to sell
> you as the biggest invention since fire implies the wish to go back to
> the stone age - the other extreme, a mindless urge for the newest
> version or release of a product can be equally stupid too though,
> still it's very common...
>
>
>> I think It was better to have some form of xp Installed then get the
>> Vista upgrade and Install It if you want. This way you have 2 ways to go
>> not one.
>
> The recent "Windows of choice" seems to be Windows XP Pro, as support
> for Windows XP home will run out in 2 years, while XP Pro is supposed
> to be supported for (if I remember correctly) 5 years from now - by
> then we surely have a clearer picture about the "state of operating
> systems"....
>
>> [...]
>
> T.C.
I could not have said it better. You are absolutely correct to fear dire
consequences because of the DRM question. I believe lots of people have
not realized how far MS has gone this time to lock future profits and it
will take time until the whole picture comes out. I cannot believe some
people can be so excited because something is "new" that they just rush
to buy anything without looking beyond the obvious. As you say, > Not
every critical statement about what a manufacturer tries to sell
>> you as the biggest invention since fire implies the wish to go back to
>> the stone age.

Within some months, computers sold will include hardware for which only
Vista drivers will be provided, so going back to XP will become more and
more difficult and Linux fans will have a hard time too for quite a while.

Everyone is entitled to his opinion, but for one, I think that MS has
already enough hold on the IT market that Vista's blatant attempt at
locking a whole new area of the digital market is the straw that breaks
the camel's back. Consumers should not condone this business model just
because something new is on the market.

Regards
--
John Doue

On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 06:41:46 GMT, "kevinkeithweaver@sbcglobal.net"
<kevinkeithweaver@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> As I remember, this was all said about XP when it 1st hit the stores.
> Everyone was saying it was this and that. Most of it was bad. But look
> at it now. People adapted to it quick. Some were saying it took to much
> cpu, mem, hd space, etc, etc.

There will probably ALWAYS be a (diplomatically spoken) "healthy
skepticism" about any new OS - especially when it's from MS - but to
no small degree that comes from experience...
....like I stated before, this time more than with any other new
Windows I agree with the ones who are more than just skeptical - the
mechanisms I described before and the philosophies behind them are of
a kind that nearly disqualifies Vista completely in my personal
opinion - I severely dislike the idea of MS being able to "remotely
interfere" that heavily with my computer - future practice will show
if MS really will pull that card - if ever they do I'd probably
seriously consider switching to Linux (which I'm not exactly a fan of
at all)
As to the change to XP - it DOES use up considerably more resources
than its predecessors in every respect you mentioned - it's far from
being a "slim and effective" OS, nor did the usability improve much to
Win 9x or Win NT (some claim it got worse even) - personally I had to
start using XP when I acquired a fairly recent laptop, as Win98 didn't
support some of the features of my ThinkPad sufficiently (USB-support,
power management, to name just a few) - it's debatable though if a
"service pack" for Win 98SE wouldn't have done the trick too in most
cases (I intentionally "skip" Win [98] ME here, as in my opinion it
made more problems than it actually solved)
I can live with XP by now, but I wouldn't claim it an ideal OS - some
things turned out to be an improvement (a basic integrated firewall,
basic access management, a general higher stability, safer HD-writing
strategies...) to its predecessors, but the hunger for resources still
impresses me negatively nearly every day I have it in use...

>
> I've Installed it and admit there are problems, XP, and I ran xp-pro,
> still has problems and it's been out for over 5yrs. With a 3rd SP In the
> works and another to follow. SP3 was to have already been out but vista
> side-tracked that. NT 4.0 Had 5 Service packs. There are still problems
> with it. But XP caused that to stop.
>
> I found one big problem so far. It's running a Microsoft wireless mouse
> 6000. This will cause the screen saver not to work. I called MS And
> there going to ship out a new updated mouse that will fix this. This is
> not a cheap mouse. I paid 60.00 for it and they said no prob. It's on
> the way.

There's more problems than that with XP - but it depends to some
degree on the hardware it's running on - my 3 different PCs run fine
mostly, but some of my buddies have all kinds of frequent problems on
their PCs (quite often ending in BSODs) - and most of them are
experienced guys who are not into the "I install everything I can
download for free"-business...

>
> I'm sure there will be many service packs or hot fixes in the future.

Fix patches? yes, for sure - Service packs? I hope for one at least -
I wouldn't bet on MS putting so much effort into XP for a SP 4...

> You have to expect that with any OS. Look at apple. They have more then
> 10 fixes the last time I've checked. That was a few months ago. I know
> they have had a few more within the past few months for the overheating
> on the Macbook. And the overheating problems were not fixed. They just
> did a few "Band-aid" Fixes. The problems are still there waiting to show
> there ugly faces again. And as long as they keep doing these so-called
> band-aid's your warranty runs out. Then your on your own.

They guys at Apple have to handle more and more security issues too
recently - same can be observed with Linux - it seems that both OS get
more attention from people seeking for exploits these days, though of
course Windows still in an league of its own there - it just
demonstrates that Windows is not the only OS with such issues at
all...

>
> With so many company's making PC's your going to have hardware/software
> problems. With Apple that makes there own hardware and software to there
> own specs the major problems should be a lot less then they have. (By
> hardware I'm talking about there ROM'S and such. They program there own
> bios chips. Microsoft has no control over what the many PC Makers put in
> there chips. I worked In QA For a major DVD/CD company. Our software
> worked on a major amount of computers that are out in the field. The
> home made systems, That another can of worms. There is always going to
> be conflicts. When I did my black box testing they were mostly on dell
> systems. No matter how large a company is. IE: MS in this case. Can't
> test every system from every computer mfg. Unlike Apple can as they
> _Control there own hardware and software_

I didn't intend to advertise for contestants like Apple or Linux - in
the end everybody has to make up his/ her own mind as to what he/ she
considers as the OS that fits best their respective desires and
requirements (to me it was Windows up until now) - still I'm not happy
about the course MS is steering for some years now, and my impression
is that with VISTA they (negatively) outdid themselves...

T.C.