To Vista, or not to Vista

Smart move. Did you read the synopsis by (IIRC) Paul Krugman from Auckland University?

Cheers Terry

Hmmm.. I'm still running Win2K here. It happily ignores things like activation etc ;-)

Terry Given wrote:

The Auckland part was dead on.

oops, IDNRC! WAFAI....

Indeed. Its pretty clear that the OS has been designed to appease hollywood, and make the PC a multimedia bugger-the-tv-dvd-etc platform.

MS can piss off though - i dont do stuff like that with my PC, nor will I in the foreseeable future. No way do I want them buggering up my CAD workstation....

I shall vote with my wallet. If only my software ran under Linux. I already use Firefox, thunderbird and open office, its just the maths, simulation and cad packages I have an issue with.

Cheers Terry

Is what you have working for you? Do you need to upgrade?

Vista is nice, they have really put a lot of thought into the UI. IT looks good, is functional and is suited to non technical people. I have been using it since the early beta days and I am impressed.

I have recently installed the RTM version, along with Office 2007. IMHO, Office 2007 is probably the single best product MS have ever released.

However, it does have its problems. My biggest issue is the fact that Vis studio 2005 + vista = bad memory leaks, especially with native code. Not much chop if you are a developer.

AFter all the hype, if you do not need to upgrade, then dont. Why waste your money if what you have works fine. It is a good product, but it is still just an OS.

The reason I use it, is because I develop Windows applications. If I dont use it, then my windows apps are not current. If the app is not current, i dont get money..

Andy.

You seem to fail to understand the full impact...the *hardware* is being changed to conform, meaning the software (Linux, Mac, ASICS, etc ad nauseum) will all follow, each driving the other as the ripple psreads and grows. As an infamous Sci-Fi saying goes "You *WILL* comply!".

I am truly hopeful that Vista is the beginning of the end of Microsoft's PC operating system dominance.

Considering the simply enormous amount of money Microsoft have had to develop windows the quality of the result is appalling.

If you were given, what, 15 years and $billions to develop a PC operating system could you sit back looking at Vista release to manufacturing and think 'job well done'?

Look at what Apple has achieved with a small fraction of the budget, and the Linux community has done with almost none.

How I would love to see Microsoft having to produce Office for Linux and chuckle at the problems they would have trying to extract Office from the incestuous mess they created.

Its all about commercial success in the end. You lose. Sorry to dissapoint.

We recently told a "I will never use windows" linux programmer that he would have to switch to windows or he would have to find a job elsewhere. Guess what, he is now writing c#.

You seem to fail to realise the power of the consumer, and the resistance of us humans in those sci fi films to comply !

at the moment in most peoples view there isnt a serious contender to windows, but if enough techy people object to it then there will be more techy people motivated to come up with an alternative, once theres a popular alternative then people wont feel they have to follow like sheep, software will then be more likely to support the alternative and it will gat her momentum. most people buy windows cos thats what everyone else buys, until now theres not been that much to actually put people off. and the alternatives are not seemingly so idiot friendly.

As for the hardware, well my current hardware is sufficient to do all what I want and I dont see that I will need to do anything that requires a big enough step to be worth upgrading for foreseable future. there may even be a rush to buy pre vista type hardware, and then a lul. If I do upgrade I would be interested in getting rid of the 16bit +32 bit kludge legacy anyway, so I can run simulations mega fast, say an array of risc cpus.

If apps are made wich require upgd to vista then tough, they wont get used by me, im sure there will always be an alternative.

I dont see how the encryption can remain secure for long, as soon as theres a simple software patch wich easily circumvents it the trust of hollywood will be lost, and all the extra expense will then be for nothing, I fail to see how they expect to keep it a secure encryption system when all the necessary codes and software must be accessable by a user, and at the end of the day to display it on a reasonably large readily available screen it will need to be in a non encrypted format. its like expecting a cash machine to be secure when you have access to the electronics inside.

I agree with win, im not paying through the nose for an expensive encryption system wich I dont want or need and wich takes up considerable resources just becuase some people somewhere want to try and collect money from me.

Im keeping my eyes on Reactos atm.

Colin =^.^=

It's isn't a question of me loosing or wining.

Everyone except Microsoft has already lost, lost the OS they deserved for the huge sums they spent.

Not sure why anyone would be gleeful about the situation, perhaps you have some Microsoft shares.

I agree. I've been using Windows XP for many years (since its release) and have been very satisfied with it. No problems at all, no crashes, no security issues (and I'm on a DSL and a heavy internet user). XP is a solid OS if you take care of it. I'm still using my trusty old Athlon XP

Vista looks really nice and may appeal to the standard (non-technical) user base, but for an engineer using the PC as a tool for things like simulation, CAD, number crunching, h/w connectivity, etc., I don't see any real benefit in upgrading to Vista. IMHO Win2000/XP is the best choice for engineers at this time.

So you are buying into the story that MS have been so successful because they were very smart in doing "busyness". The power of mass media....

And there probably are plenty of other as conformistic stories, this is what keeps the big ones big. Some people are conformists because they know they are better off than they deserve to be for what they do and just have to conform or let go (the most typical case in the developed countries); others are just cowards and others are looking for a master to serve under and so on. But make no mistake, just because the majority of the people fit some of the above descriptions does not mean all people fit it, no matter how unbelievable this may sound.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------ Dimiter Popoff Transgalactic Instruments

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The Real Andy wrote:

Umm... in case you don't recall, Apple completely *tossed out* their own homegrow OS developed in the '90s and went with the NeXT/BSD-based UNIX for OS X. This allowed them to leverage decades of other peoples' experience/expense for very little money out of their own pockets, so it's not really fair to claim Apple did more with less... they were just smarter about how they spent their money.

To this day, many parts of OS X are still freeware from 3rd parties, such as the SAMBA code (that allows Windows PCs to transparently access shared folders/printers on a Mac).

OpenOffice for Linux is quite good (perfectly sufficient) for very many peoples' needs, but Microsoft Office is far more powerful. With a little Visual BASIC scripting (built into the Office products, as well as Windows itself these days) you can sample data from, e.g., LabView, send it to Excel to generate some tables/graphs/whatever, and stuff it into a report within Word documents, using direct function calls from the VB script into each application (using COM). I'd like to see Linux/OpenOffice do that without generating a bunch of cheesy intermediate log/control files...

There are pros and cons for each OS...

---Joel

Did you let him keep his Linux box around to check his e-mail/read Usenet? :-)

Micro$oft is not an answer, Micro$oft is a question. And the answer is "NO!"...

Yup.

The gap is narrowing.

COM).

So, has anyone gotten unacceptable results from Noel Power's implementattion of VBA for OOo? http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:G6vZhKnP8msJ:

For 15 years I have been maintaining a 90 MHz Unix server with 64 Mb of ram and a 1 Gb SCSI drive supporting a 5 user system.

The 'replacement' we wound up with is a dual processor HP 2 GB RAM server (with 150 Gb Raid 1 drive system) costing $7,000 and running Windows Server

Plus we were told we would need all new dual core WinXP workstations - another $5,000. Plus all new software - $80,000 and growing.

Yeah, great improvement. Faster? Don't make me laugh.

"All your base are belong to us"?

Time to go Linux!

I've seen a lot of "IT guys" *seriously* overspec a system. Look at John Larkin's recent example -- the big guys (HP) were trying to steer him the same direction you ended up going, and he said "no thanks" and bought an Alienware system, which I suspect is just as good as anything HP would've sold him and many thousands less.

I've worked at a place with a handful of fancy Dell servers that had