Windows Vista?

[ShinNoNoir]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Still, I'm taking it philosophically - I'm not buying Vista at all till I absolutely need it. Maybe I'll just stop playing PC games entirely and switch go all the way to Linux.

Same thing here, desktop will soon be running Ubuntu and laptop is an Ibook so i don't really care.. ^^

The reason i posted the link was simply to inform future buyers/customers of what they'll be getting, specially since (sad reality) many people don't RTFM/license.. oh well -_-

[Epyon9283]

Originally Posted by samurai666

This is completely incorrect. M$ is going far beyond protecting their own license, by implementing various types of restrictions that should only be implemented by individual entities and not the OS itself. Acquiring a M$ product as a student is not expensive at all, but the fact that Vista is surely going to be problematic and ridiculously restrictive has steered me and others away from it. Surely there will be ways to pirate Vista, as every M$ product has been exploited in the past, but for legal users M$ is only making it harder for us.

The bottom line is that M$ should not be including DRM, HDCP, ICT, etc. in their OS, none of that is directly tied to protecting M$'s own intellectual property. Also they have to be foolish to believe that people are going to buy multiple copies of the same software for multiple systems in their home, even if they are the sole user. I won't even get into the upgrade limitations, eventually M$ will dig their own grave with their backwards thinking.

The only place I still have windows installed is in a virtual machine for certain things I need to do at work. I'm not a fan of Windows. I use Linux at work and OS X and Linux at home. That being said, MS is simply trying to stop people from pirating their software. I think they're going about it in the completely wrong way but thats just my opinion. If they wanted to sell more copies they should really lower the price.

[-KarumA-]

is it true that with Windows Vista you can play Xbox games on your pc, i think i heard a rumor about that a long time ago..

[l33tpocky]

Im jumping the MS ship this year . Not dealing with any more ctl alt del crap . Im getting a mac with its beautiful OS X not vista that is pretty much a riped off version of the OS X just not quite as efficient.

[Epyon9283]

Originally Posted by -KarumA-

is it true that with Windows Vista you can play Xbox games on your pc

nope. You can use a 360 controller with vista but I think thats about it.

[npal]

Just saw Vista prices on a site I buy software from. Even the humble (or pathetic, depends on the outlook ) Home Basic Upgrade (which I wasn't planning on buying anyway) costs 160 Euro, while a full Ultimate costs 630 Euro. LOL! And above that is the boxed Suse 10.1 Pro for about 65 Euro (if you don't want to download the newer free openSuse 10.2 ).

[Cz]

What?!? Stop buying from that site right now.

From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist.../ultimate.mspx: Suggested retail price for full package product, $399.00 USD. That comes out to about 300 EUR. You're better off going to another merchant.

[GHDpro]

Originally Posted by lwl12

From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvist.../ultimate.mspx: Suggested retail price for full package product, $399.00 USD. That comes out to about 300 EUR. You're better off going to another merchant.

Hah! If only that were true. Unfortunately Europeans always get screwed over in regards to the exchange rate*. But anyway, I checked a site I ordered a PC from a few months back, and while they don't list upgrade versions yet, they have the full retail Ultimate version for 488 euro, which is a lot less than 630 euro. So you might want to check other sites in your region/country (for NL, the site was: www.azerty.nl).

Also if you want the Vista eye candy you'll need at least Home Premium edition.

*) The exchange rate should make products 10-30% cheaper compared to the US. But they're usually 10-30% more expensive. Example is both the Wii and PS3, which cost as much euro's here as they do dollars in the US.

[Vexx]

I *really* recommend people who build their own machines wait til at least SP1 before putting Vista on a machine and make sure you're well above minimum spec for hardware.

If you buy a new machine with Vista pre-installed, you're basically out on a limb but good luck to you. I wouldn't waste time getting a Vista upgrade for an existing machine until that first game arrives that won't run without it that you MUST have and can't find some workaround to make it run. Vista is *known* to break some existing applications .. so you might want to consider making an excellent whole drive backup before installing it and testing every piece of software you like to use.

I don't know of a single corporate entity moving to Vista (hell, most of them are still testing the upgrade from Win2K to XP to see what all breaks in their business applications).

[Edgewalker]

I was orignally going to drag this out and list all the reasons, but for the most part it can all be summarized in one sentance:

"It isnt compatible with anything"

I work at a place that cannot be named, where we troubleshoot people's problems who have ATT-YAHOO for their DSL ISP. Every time I get a person calling me who is having trouble with windows vista, the problem wasnt the usual PEBCAP ( Problem exists between computer and person ) the problem was vista. In many cases, trying to install software that wasnt even that old would bluescreen vista. And it will keep bluescreening even if you shut it down. Of course, one of the peices of software happens to be our installation CD for our ISP registration process. How many calls do we get from angry customers complaining about how we "ruined their brand new computer" a day ? Too many. Microsoft has failed at backwards compatibility yet again.

And as for the "New features" Vista provides ? Aside from a sleeker looking, ( but organizationally inferior IMO ) UI. The list of windows vista features can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature..._Windows_Vista

hmmmm....notice anything ?

Every "New" feature in windows vista isn't new. The features are all either uneeded graphical changes, upgrades to old crappy software that really dont matter ( BTW: DO NOT install IE7, its basically a buggified wannabe firefox with more holes in its security then swiss cheese ) or copies of programs that have already created by a 3rd party developer. Vista is nothing new.



And now for audio codecs. Again, its compatabilty is still pretty bad. Its getting better as people work on it, but its still no where near as good as what you can get from Wnxp, Win2k, or decent Linux builds.
http://www.cccp-project.net/wiki/ind...#Windows_Vista
http://kb.wisc.edu/page.php?id=5175


The point Im trying to get accross here is simple: Windows Vista doesnt provide anything new other then looks, and has yet to run everything as good as those before it. It was designed to look like an upgrade to fool the general public into thinking Microsoft has done something new.


NOTE: I was too lazy to list all the reasons. Feel free to post more, it would be nice if we could get a comprehensive list going on all the exact reasons why vista fails it.

[Xeiros]

Another in an endless line of "Vista=the next Windows ME" arguments I've seen. I saw this shaping up since the early betas. Vista was always going to be viewed as a failure in the press and consequently by wanna-be Tech and Industry professionals. One of which is what I think we have in this case. The only good thing is that this particular piece of FUD doesn't use the usual suspect of DRM to villianize Vista with.

1.Price. Vista Home Premium OEM = $120 @Newegg. This is the version most home users would be using and as far as OEM, there's no difference except your unable to return it. But that shouldn't be a problem unless your planning on Vista to fail you, like some. As far as having to upgrade, I didn't but either way this shouldn't be calculated into Vista's cost. HW makers are going to make faster products regardless of how long you want MS to sit still. Then pretty soon your sitting there with 4 or 8 gigs of ram, as will be the norm soon, saying why is XP only using 250MB. I bought that ram for a reason.

2.Nothing new. Except, of course, search indexing, instant searching, Superfetch(yes, finally, the ram I paid for gets used), better navigation(with breadcrumb bars and new start menu. Click Start, type 2 or 3 keys and there's the prog I'm looking for. So much quicker than flyouts with all your progs listed.), Bitlocker and EFS, DirectX 10, Live thumbnails(never click on the wrong taskbar item again), and Sidebar(yes, its a feature and its functional not just eye candy) just to name some off the top of my head.

3.UAC only new security feature. Forget Protected-Mode for IE7, Defender, and an updated Firewall. Sure none of these solutions are perfect but isn't it better they run out of the box and better than some users who would run without any.

4.Compatibility issues. As if this didn't happen with XP. In the longest beta program in the history of software, how did your hardware maker get caught out by not having a driver ready in time. Says something about how they value your patronage. You can complain about bloat, with Vista weighting in at over 2.5 GB, but you can't complain about compatibility. Vista is shipping with more drivers than XP did.

5.Confusing. How could something with no marked difference worth upgrading to also be so confusing so as to befuddle some1 of this guys intelligence.

6.All software, especially new software has bugs. Same was true of XP and still is. As far as these particular bugs, maybe the answer is in number 5, he's admittedly confused.

[npal]

Ok, I finally installed Vista, after a major hardware upgrade, so I guess I'll share my thoughts.

1. Driver availability: Same with early XP adoption. Of course, those who aren't early Windows adopters wouldn't know that XP had scarce driver availability. Back then, we used some of the Win2000 drivers on XP, sometimes they worked ok, sometimes they didn't do that well. It will get fixed with time.

2. Driver compatibility. See above. It's the same case with early XP adoption, nothing new, it will get fixed in time. My major problem right now is Nvidia's drivers that don't seem stable enough, as they are somehow prone to failing, although Vista reloads them.

3. Functionality/Ease of Use. I find the new Windows Explorer interface better in many ways than the previous one. The Start menu doesn't take over the screen when, like me, you are susceptible to install a lot of software for various tasks, or games.

4. Eyecandy. One of Vista's strong points. Beryl in Linux is really nice but a)it's too much eyecandy that can impede useability and it's too heavy to run effectively. For people who DO want eye candy (as those who don't, don't care about Beryl or Aero either way).

5. Security. Ok, Windows was never a secure system. UAC might provide some usefulness (as back in XP I had an antispyware or an antivirus alone to tell me what program does what), but it's not an essential security element. They could have done better, as it doesn't really stop novice users from tampering the system without knowing (although you can do worse than that in Linux if you learn a simple sudo command).

6. Software compatibility. Well, everything I use and installed works in Vista so far. It's not much, one or two games, some cd burning utilities, CCCP, various small utilities.

7. Hardware requirements. If you want your 5+ yo machine to run an new OS acceptably, get the latest installment of Ubuntu, it's a good system (although I use Kubuntu) and its requirements are not that high and if you ever get a really good pc, you could enable beryl, which is extreme desktop eye candy, so no real lose. Just take into account that both hardware and software evolve and you should really consider throwing that junk and buying something new. There are decent budget level systems you can buy.

8. Price. What hurst Vista the most is the price. Being an early Windows adopter usually, that's the main problem I had, but being an MS fan, and although Kubuntu and XP were doing just fine, I decided to get it, after getting some feedback from friends regarding their system, which wasn't all "M$ must die, my system doesn't work". But yeah, the price sucks, even for the Home Premium edition. I have to mention that they should have left the old upgrade path intact. The new upgrade path, although it can be circumvented, is bad policy and a questionable philosophy.

Overall, it's just like any other Windows. It has problems related to drivers and software in the beginning, it's still Windows, so don't expect immense security all of a sudden, the price for each Windows edition is getting higher for some reason, but it's a good Windows system if you ask me. If you are like me and like Windows, you should get this one eventually. If you don't, Linux and OS X are good alternatives to consider.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Xeiros

1.Price. Vista Home Premium OEM = $120 @Newegg. This is the version most home users would be using and as far as OEM, there's no difference except your unable to return it.

No, there's one other important difference. Once you've installed an OEM version on one machine, the End User License Agreement (EULA) forbids you from transferring the installation to another machine. This actually seems rather generous on Microsoft's part. Without having read about the licensing provisions, I would have assumed that the EULA would forbid an OEM installation on machines other than the one with which the OEM copy was shipped. You are actually allowed to install an OEM version, even if you're not an OEM, but you may not legally transfer that installation to any other machines. It's "one-and-done."

While you might have ignored this prohibition in earlier versions of Windows, "Windows Genuine Advantage" seems to be more draconian in its efforts to enforce the licensing rules. If you do transfer the installation, or install your copy two or three times, it's seems pretty likely that once one of those machines connect to the Internet, Microsoft will lower the boom.

[Kurz]

As long as you use an OEM on only 1 computer there are no worries.
If you want to transfer the install all it takes is a phone call stating "My motherboard died and I had to build myself a new computer"

Microsoft wont care as long as the copy is only used on one machine.
I had this happen to me with XP and it still holds true with Vista.

[Lexander]

I cloned my xp drive and installed vista ultimate a few days ago.
I'm very happy with it. It's very stylin' and has some nice new features. <3

I had 0 problems with drivers or codecs btw. Even from a fresh install it did much better than xp. The only hardware that wasn't installed was this ancient pci to ide adapter(still the drivers i used to install this card on xp worked for vista too).

The only problem I've encountered is with media player classic. vista has to switch to the basic theme to run it.
And there is a weird bug with the microsoft office shortcuts. They don't work :/

lastly: the first time I saw vista was on a 1.3 gigahizee computer with 512 megaroos of ram and it was ... running. It wasn't smooth or anything but the xp on that computer wasn't much of a treat either.

[Syaoran]

Vista's security is a joke O.o
The way it can be cracked is something that I don't get... how can the most secure OS even allow it !?



It even passes the Genuine Validation tests for downloading the extra Vista Ultimate content X_x

I can think of ways to counter this exploit quite easily. However, it will be something that has to be updated very regularly as the hackers won't sit quiet either.

[Jinto]

I think securing the product (Vista) itself was not the most internals affecting part in Vista. Afaik many things are the way they are, because it will be so far the only OS able to play HD content. All the important changes in the architecture, that have been done to influence sound and graphics hardware (allowing to virtually downgrade hardware if needed), as well as the new core of the system, makes me feel, it is meant to provide more security for applications.
The thing is, now Vista is quite "buggy"/insecure and does not support all hardware that e.g. XP does. Since people will not like to use it that way, they need to upgrade it, which in return allows Microsoft, to constantly improve the security mechanisms.
This will be a race between hackers and the industry (the same way its been with the insecurities in XP). There will be service packs, regular updates and so on.
Once HD (with HDCP) capabilites become more and more important, vendors will ship their media PCs with Vista.
So since Microsoft with regards to true HD capabilities has a monopol in the OS market at the moment (and possibly in the future), one basically will have to decide between 3 things:

1) Buying Vista, getting regular updates, and be able to use the (for many still most important) features DX10 and HD. (btw. DX10 is not only a software standard it is a hardware standard too).

2) Using ever new hacks (with unforseen concequences to the system), that try to catch up with the constantly evolving security/copyright protection system.

3) Not going to use Vista and future media formats on a PC.

I neither like to be dependend on a series of hacks (that may harm my system, or do more than I know of), nor do I like a OS that has been crippled, just to allow/secure the playback of certain media/applications. Though I am a realist, and I think the lobbies are just too powerful, so we (the users) have to adapt to it, or (if we refuse) be the only geeks, that do use obsolete media, just to be independend (my realistic view... my optimistic view is, that people refuse to buy the new media, unless the ridiculous protection mechanisms are disposed - which is not likely going to happen)

[killmoms]

Now that I'm older and have money, I care a lot less about DRM than I used to. I can afford to buy an HD DVD player and an HDTV, so what do I care about HDCP? I have all the compliant stand-alone devices I need to watch my content. Who needs a computer for movies when you've got a nice big 1080p TV and surround sound? Certainly not I.

[WanderingKnight]

What I still can't understand is why Microshit puts such a high price on its product. Well, due to economical laws, it is understandable since MShit holds the monopoly, and they can do whatever they want with the price. But if they're so paranoid about piracy, why not lower the prices, so more people can be tempted into buying Vista and don't need to resort to pirated copies of the OS? Such a huge price for an OS seems extremely wasteful for me. And since they don't have any manufacturing costs to cover to begin with (well, ruling out the minimal cost of the DVD, the paper for the manual and the box ), what's the difference between reaching a little amount of people who will buy Vista at a high price (pirate releases are online already, so a lot of people who don't want to spend too much money on it are just directly getting it from pirate sources), to reaching a lot more people by drastically lowering the price? They might be getting the same gains, or even more if you think about it. That'd be much more effective to fight the pirate industry than protecting the goddamn OS against the user.

[SeijiSensei]

Retail sales of Vista are just gravy from Microsoft's point of view. Not many people are going to upgrade their operating system, and everyone buying a new computer is essentially forced to buy Vista. Microsoft knows the upgraders are either businesses, or people looking for a shiny new toy and can afford one.

Something like a hundred million computers will be shipped this year. How many of those do you suppose will have Vista pre-installed? Upgraders probably won't account for more than a couple percent of that figure.

In today's throw-away world, I see people buying brand new computers because their current machines are riddled with malware. Rather than trying to deal with the problem, or sending the computer out for repair, they just buy a new one (with Vista, of course).