Windows Vista?

[guest]

As window is going to realease their latest version, called "Vista," on January 2007, I would like to know what people's opnions on this. I don't know if this should be here or tech forum because I would like to know all kinds of opinions, not just technical things. (econamics, maybe?)
I think as for fans here, one significant feature of Vista may be this:

Digital Rights Management

Another common criticism concerns the integration of new forms of Digital Rights Management into the operating system, specifically High-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) and the Image Constraint Token (ICT), which reduces the quality of high-definition video content if the video card and monitor are not HDCP-enabled.[5] All HD DVD and Blu-ray players must follow AACS guidelines and restrict the resolution for outputs without HDCP to 960×540 provided an ICT flag is given. The decision to set the flag to restrict output ("down-convert") is left to the content provider. The criticism against HDCP may be misplaced, however, as it is still unclear as to whether all high definition media will be subject to HDCP protection.[5] Movie studios are apparently in agreement to not include the ICT flag on any HD DVDs or Blu-ray Discs until at least 2010, or possibly even 2012.[6]

Source: Wiki

How do you think?

[Ending]

Don't forget the following, both taken from BoingBoing.net:

Vista license only lets you reinstall your OS on new PCs twice
If you're naive enough to buy a PC with Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, prepare to be reamed: the new license only lets you move it to one other PC before it locks forever. Break your PC twice, buy a new operating system. Nice to see Microsoft doing its level best to screw people who already have it rough.

The first user of the software may reassign the license to another device one time. If you reassign the license, that other device becomes the "licensed device," reads the license for Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate, and Business. In other words, once a retail copy of Vista is installed on a PC, it can be moved to another system only once.

4. Problem-solving prohibited. "You may not work around any technical limitations in the software." Microsoft might be referring to anticircumvention of technical protection measures here, but since it's often hard to tell the difference, from the user's perspective, between a TPM and a bug, this reads as a prohibition on user debugging and problem-solving. After all, down-rezzing, HD content or refusing to allow users to copy quotes from an e-book don't strike most people as wanted features. Can you work around a document's failure to save properly?

Plus, Vista will only work on brand spanking new rigs. Hope you got extra 2.000 € at the bottom of your pocket. I don't, and I don't want to start sorting out the incompatibility problems with the software, as is always the case with a new operating system. Service Pack 2 caused enough of them to some, so a whole new OS has to be the same by 2.

If I had to change from XP, I would change to open source. If it ever becomes on-par with the quality. My experience with Mandriva was, the very least, work-filled...

[panzerfan]

I agree with wordplay... (paying attention to Ubuntu right now for that).
Although... DirectX 10 will only be available with Vista. DirectX 10 will be an item that gamers cannot do without...

[someguyouknow]

I switched to linux this summer and havent looked back. I even got rid of my XP partition. That said, i dont think i will be using Vista any time soon. There are many reasons why but main reasons are cost and restrictions.

[Red HamsterX]

I switched entirely to Linux-based systems (favouring Debian), not counting my two BSD boxes, in early 2002, after using a few of the more prominent Linux distributions on-and-off since mid-1998.

Not a single regret here, which is good, since Microsoft's EULA just keeps getting messier.

[LuckyCat]

You can download Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 from Microsoft for free. See how you like it on your computer (or if it can run). If you have a high-end machine (especially one with a ton of RAM) you may even see a performance increase. Also consider the 64-bit Windows XP trial

[Poseidal]

DirectX 10 will be an item that gamers cannot do without...

In the year 2010, no doubt.

I'm not even considering getting it until at least the first service pack anyway (as is my way with MS OSs).

Since it's got the 'only two installs' thing, if I get it, I'll try to get the OEM version, which only allows one install anyway. Break your PC, and phone Microsoft and they'll give you an activation code as long as it's only installed on one PC. And it's cheaper. (though I think I may need to buy it with a new mobo, which I'll probably get a cheap one for a linux box).

[guest]

If I switch to any other OS than windows, the major problem is that like 95% of software out there is for windows, even the free ones on the net. I would be willing to try, even if most of OS--other than windows and mac--is still not amateur friendly, if this is not the case.

[npal]

For Linux, you can configure various emulators to run Windows applications. Only things you might need to run that don't run in Linux initially are games. Every other productivity application has its equivalent in Linux distributions and it's mostly doing a good job.

[Ending]

DirectX 10 will be an item that gamers cannot do without...

It's the same thing as with the new consoles: it becomes worth purchasing only once it has enough support (games). If no one buys it, the devs will stay in DX9.0 or switch to another, such as OpenGL. The fact is that only the current version of DX9.0 is a must-have. DX10 is completely different matter -like the OS.

Also consider the 64-bit Windows XP trial

Considered and tried, but it's only a trial and 64-bit XP is yet again a whole new OS. Or in other words: apps that work on 32-bit XP do not usually work on the 64-bit version. Again, this sets XP to the same line with the open source alternatives. Which one of them is the best?

[basket]

I think I must be one of the few people in this thread who is actually running Vista as opposed to talking about running it or reading other peoples' experiences of running it and extrapolating from there.

Anyway, some thoughts:

- It does use up a lot of disk space if you do an in-place upgrade (which is what I did) because it makes a backup of your existing user profile and then migrates that. But for a clean install, it uses up only about 2 GB of disk space (this is a beta, so the debugging code is still compiled in, etc.).

- The upgrade process took about two hours, and a clean install took about half an hour. This is very much dependent on the speed of your DVD drive and hard disk, but I like the new setup process because it doesn't copy and expand each file individually (like XP/2000 setup used to do) but rather transfers an image over and then expands that with the machine-specific information. It also looks much nicer and more user-friendly.

- It does feel smoother than XP did on the same laptop (Centrino 1.86 GHz, 1GB RAM, 64MB Radeon X700) and definitely looks much prettier (Aero <3). Even running GTK+ programs like Xchat doesn't disable Aero, which surprised me.

- Contrary to what Wordplay says, you don't have to buy a new computer to get any benefits from Vista. I upgraded my dad's computer (a P3-750 with 384 MB RAM that used to be wao's desktop) to Vista RC2 from WinXP, and even though Aero Glass isn't supported (it uses Aero Basic), it's still more responsive and feels more stable than XP did. And dare I say it, it's even a little bit faster?

- Flip3D isn't really like Expose, but that doesn't make it any less pretty or useful for me.

- Quite a few drivers are still not there yet, but I'm hopeful that they'll be ready by the time Vista is released to consumers. Most of the buttons on my laptop work, but the on-screen display doesn't appear. It did on my clean install, though, so I'll have to see what's up with that. The Intel wireless utilities are also broken but I expect Intel to fix that soon since the business release of Vista is coming first.

- Regarding the license and how many times you can install/transfer it, I'd wait for the final license to come out and then see what that says instead of assuming that the license that's out now is the final one. It's possible that Microsoft will change the license, especially since a lot of people, including the beta testers, have sent feedback or complained about this issue.

[Js2756]

Originally Posted by Shiosai

Also consider the 64-bit Windows XP trial

My friend tried it over a year ago and it was a disaster. Lousy driver support and lack of 64 bit programs meant it was crashing all the time. Needless to say, he made the switch back to 32 bit XP pretty quick and now only uses it to play games (he's primarily an Ubuntu user now).

As for me, I'm still running Win2K, as XP has no features that I need, so why should I bother upgrading? The same mentality will apply with Vista. Until it demonstrates that there is something on it that is needed that is not in either 2K or XP, I'm not upgrading.

[guest]

Something just occurred to me, if I buy a brand new hard drive, which I am going to use as my primary hd and I need to install an OS, not just upgrade, can I do that by buying a full version of windows xp?

My computer is kind of old and windows xp is OEM. It was ready to use when I bought the computer. I don't know if I can move it to my new hd or have two computers use the same copy of windows xp. I assume not since it is OEM. But if I get a full version of xp, is it, urr, bootable for a brand new hd? I mean, how does this work for a brand new hd that is not even formatted?

Can I just upgrade my xp oem to vista?

[Kupop]

There's an option during the installation of XP to format the drive, so it'll take care of that for you. You might be able to migrate the OEM copy if the rest of the hardware is the same, but don't quote me on that... I never actually tried changing the primary drive with OEM Windows XP... just a bunch of secondary drives.

Also, if the Windows Vista upgrade version is anything like prior versions of Windows, Vista will most likely (again, don't quote me on this... this is only applying knowledge based on prior Windows versions) only require that you have an installation CD of a prior version of Windows onhand during the upgrade rather than having to actually have the OS installed on the system.

[Vexx]

About five years ago, I just decided to keep two machines --- one purely for gaming (with all the DRM/gamespyware/blah). And one for "real work" (and anime, etc)
with a KVM switch for a monitor/keybd.

This has reduced a LOT of my issues with buggy games, DRM, etc wreaking havoc with my other computer activities. The game machine runs XP/SP2.
At the moment, my work machine runs win2Ksp6.
However, I've thrown together a third box that runs Ubuntu and am experimenting with the different packages to see if I can get all my "usual activities" to run nicely under Linux Ubuntu. If that works, I'm shifting to Ubuntu for all my "real work and audio/video stuff" and not looking back.

My real problem with Vista is this "install twice" shit. I routinely upgrade my components on my homebuilt gaming box including the motherboard and (pardon my French) *fuck* the idea that I can only upgrade my computer twice and have to buy a new copy of the OS. Really, thats what transferring the OS really means.... I bought a new video card, cpu, mobo, or hard drive. I'll check the Vista site but everytime I visit or check the tech-news, the Vista claims keep changing. With XP, I've changed mobo and CPU twice, video card thrice, and had one hard drive failure ... on one of those instances I had to call in and say "I'm upgrading my computer..... magic code please." Annoying but at least they gave me the code.

Honestly, I'm not sure the damn thing (Vista) will ever actually come out. The corporations that have thousands of PCs are already screaming bloody murder about some of the garbage they're hearing. And with Microsoft apparently completely confused about whether they're selling an OS for home use or corporate use and ohwhataboutpeoplewhoworkathome they can't even seem to clusterfuck properly lately. They may end up caving in on the "renting an OS to one device" schtick.

I think I've used the f- word more times in this post than in all my previous posts on this whole forum. Thanks to Microsoft for that bit of degradation of my soul.

[Poseidal]

My computer is kind of old and windows xp is OEM. It was ready to use when I bought the computer. I don't know if I can move it to my new hd or have two computers use the same copy of windows xp. I assume not since it is OEM. But if I get a full version of xp, is it, urr, bootable for a brand new hd? I mean, how does this work for a brand new hd that is not even formatted?

The OEM has a license to be installed on ONE computer. Technically, it's tied to the Motherboard, and you can change the Hard Disk, Processor, Graphics card and everything else as much as you want and it'll still be valid.

Also, MS might give you a new activation code for XP if the old Motherboard was damaged.

[npal]

My only problem for not switching to Linux completely is hardware developer support. It plainly sucks, and it sucks pretty bad. Some high end hardware (including my precious x-fi) has no drivers, not even barebone beta ones. And why just barebone support anyway? I wasn't buying hardware to miss more than half of what it can offer. And the developer excuse is "not many people ask for it, so we haven't done it". Talk about freedom of choice... Unless some other company, like Google, produces a user friendly open source OS and strikes deals with the developers, Microsoft has the upper hand more or less

[killmoms]

Until something necessitates getting Vista, the only Windows I'll be running will be XP SP2 on a partition in Boot Camp on my Mac Pro next spring. Leopard will be farther ahead in terms of OS technology anyway, and all I need Windows for is the occasional Windows-only game.

[Epyon9283]

I completely switched to Linux on my PC 3 years ago and more recently I've gotten a couple Macs. I have no reason to use Vista now. I still keep XP in a virtual machine for work related things that need windows but the software I use there isn't compatible with Vista yet and won't be for quite a while.

[bayoab]

Originally Posted by Vexx

My real problem with Vista is this "install twice" shit. I routinely upgrade my components on my homebuilt gaming box including the motherboard and (pardon my French) *fuck* the idea that I can only upgrade my computer twice and have to buy a new copy of the OS. Really, thats what transferring the OS really means.... I bought a new video card, cpu, mobo, or hard drive. I'll check the Vista site but everytime I visit or check the tech-news, the Vista claims keep changing. With XP, I've changed mobo and CPU twice, video card thrice, and had one hard drive failure ... on one of those instances I had to call in and say "I'm upgrading my computer..... magic code please." Annoying but at least they gave me the code.

From the most recent news I've seen, they said that "the HD and one other item" will cause Vista to ask for re-activation.

Linkage