I must say, I am VERY impressed with Windows XP

[Charles]

I am very impressed with it. I used build 2462, 2465, 2474, 2481. And I see nothing other than improvements. And I think WinXP will change the way I work with my files and the way I explore my computer. I will no longer put shortcuts or other icons on desktop anymore.

 

[LocutusX]

Hmm... is Build 2493 = "RC1"?

 

[lucidguy]

<< I don't know how much MS charges, but it certainly isn't as much as you're implying. >>



Whatever MS is charging, Ogg Vorbis charges less. ($0) And since mp3-CD players are becoming less luxurious and more consumer oriented each passing day, it also stands to reason that they will become cloned and underpriced by Far Eastern manufacturers. Already, it's possible to get a number of competent mp3-CD players for well under $100.

Standard portable CD players have gone down in price to become very accessible consumer products. You can get one easily for $20-30 these days. For mp3-CD players to hit that price point, they must avoid license fees as much as possible.

There is absolutely no reason to prefer wma over ogg. If you know of one, tell me. Qualitywise, they are equivalent. Spacewise, they are equivalent. On the other hand, there is a million reasons to prefer ogg over wma:

* No license crippling anywhere in its specification. You can't tie an ogg song to a machine. This is not possible, especially because ogg, like mp3, is OS and device agnostic.
* No license fees.
* No patent encumberance.
* Support for EVERY OS in existence either already implemented, or easily implementable using a BSD licensed C++ library.
* No one company controlling the specification for financial purposes, making it impossible to &quot;embrace and extend&quot; the format in the future. Microsoft has already done this at least once, in order to force people to upgrade to the latest version of Windows Media Player.

I am not criticizing wma on technical merits. It is a competent codec. However, there is no reason to use it when there exists another codec that performs just as well, and has several advantages over wma.

 

[HansXP]

I'm not saying I support WMA either--I don't think we needed any more music formats. What I am saying is that you are so blinded by your hate for MS that you can't get facts straight.



<< No license crippling anywhere in its specification. You can't tie an ogg song to a machine. This is not possible, especially because ogg, like mp3, is OS and device agnostic. >>



Whooptie-do. Uncheck one box in WMP and none of the tracks you rip to WMA have any licenses either.

 

[mackstann]

you can still only play it on a windows machine, though

 

[HansXP]

No, Macs have WMP as well. Linux doesn't - YET.

 

[lucidguy]

<< No, Macs have WMP as well. Linux doesn't - YET. >>



Bill Gates throws bones at Apple to give the impression that MacOS is competition for Windows. He produced WMP, Office, IE for Mac to make it seem like the MacOS desktop is a viable competitor to the Windows desktop.

It isn't. The MacOS dektop runs on proprietary hardware that only Apple makes. Apple abandoned their OEM hardware plans a long time ago, so Apple hardware will never become as cheap or as widely available as Intel compatible hardware. There is a reason that the word &quot;PC&quot; is synonymous with &quot;Intel compatible hardware&quot; and that reason is market penetration. Apple by itself can never achieve the kind of market penetration that hundreds of vendors competing with one another and building on common standards can. Apple serves a niche, Apple knows this, Bill Gates also knows this, and that's why he's not too worried about making apps for the Mac desktop.

Linux on the other hand runs on the same widely available and cheap Intel compatible hardware that Windows runs. (Alongside a bunch of other architectures) If there's a candidate that can challenge Windows on the desktop, Linux is it. Bill Gates would commit suicide before he would produce any apps that would make Linux a more viable desktop solution than it already is.

In short, wma is not coming to Linux anytime soon. It's not coming to the cheaper, more affordable mp3-CD players. It's not coming to your set-top box. It's not coming to your digital-music enabled stereo component. Because, frankly, these embedded devices are already sold at razor thin margins, and they have to get away with using as little hardware as possible. You need Win XP to play licensed wma's. Win XP Embedded will not run on an equivalent of P133 with 16 Megs RAM. Win XP Embedded will not run on StrongARM, Dragonball, Coldfire, or any of those other low-cost low-power system-on-a-chip solutions. Linux will. Linux will run on these architectures, will cost nothing, will play ogg's, and this additional functionality will also cost nothing. Linux and Ogg Vorbis will also provide the consumer with the kind of convenience that licensed wma's can't. Case closed, gentlemen.

P.S. You may claim that licensed wma's are nowhere to be seen. You would be wrong. Follow up with Napster and MSN Music over the next few months, and they will move to distribution SOLELY in licensed wma format.

Microsoft is making a great push to get consumers to accept crippled, licensed music. Ogg Vorbis is our only hope of getting consumers to see that they can get better music quality at smaller file sizes without having to out up with Microsoft's crippling licenses.

 

[HalfHuman]

<< Well if it's 500$ dollars it better come with a vibrating p _ _ _ y in the box. :Q >>



ROTFLMAO!!!! time for the FU-FME, I wonder if it come with drivers.

 

[GT1999]

Mmm, sounds good. I'm about to give it a whirl as well (2481 Pro).

 

[dowxp]

erm, stupid question, but how do you get the builds? =). is it via signup or something?

 

[dalnar]

Bangsailio Microsoft has a preview program you can sign up for to get the betas. However you will have to pay $10 to sign up. Well here's the Url if your interested.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/preview/default.asp

 

[Kusta]

Well, maybe you like it. However you should see and read this article:
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/editorials/3487/1/

 

[chasm22]

Wow Kusta! That was a helluva interesting article. I guess I have been a little lax keeping up with the latest news. All that I can say is no wonder so many people dislike and distrust Microsoft. With ideas like 'Smart Tag' technology, they make it easy to hate them.

 

[1967mustangman]

How does it work with your legacy software?

 

[Linux23]

I just registered for the Preview Program. I really don't hate Microsoft, but I really don't love them either. Just curious about what the fuss is over a piece of software. I'll judge for myself when I get the OS installed on my system!

Has RC1 been release yet? I ordered the CD because I am sick of downloading hundreds of megabytes of data on my cable modem (Mandrake Linux 3 times, and now FreeBSD). Linux failed to installed each time, so i'm hoping for FreeBSD to come through!

 

[bhess]

Did anyone get a wheel mouse preferably logitech to work? I've tried it with 2485 and can't get anything but scroll to work.

 

[Chaotic42]

<< Whooptie-do. Uncheck one box in WMP and none of the tracks you rip to WMA have any licenses either. >>



I believe lucidguy is talking about the licensing of the wma format. The ogg vorbis format
is public domain. All of the tools are GPL. The Windows Media Format isn't.

WMA Licence

 

[Kusta]

Old-new story about M$:
http://www.wired.com/news/mp3/0,1285,44463,00.html:Q

 

[lucidguy]

<< I believe lucidguy is talking about the licensing of the wma format >>



I'm talking about both. Sure, Microsoft will end up charging an arm and a leg to device manufacturers for the privilege of using a crippled music format, but consumers will by and large be unaware of these licensing fees.

I am also referring to licensing as it refers to cryptographically associating a specific copy of a file with a specific Windows installation, so that the file will not play in any other device anywhere else on the planet. Microsoft is already testing the waters with this system on a number of sites. CinemaNow.com uses this licensing crap for their pay-per-view movies. epitomic.com I believe has a number of promotional wma tracks that tie themselves to your machine. These promotional wma tracks have in fact appeared on a number of sites, mostly of the electronic music variety. And so on and so forth. MSN Music and Napster will use this crippled format in a big way in the coming months.

I wrote to customer service at one of these sites, and asked them how exactly the consumer was being served by crippling the music and attaching it to a single machine. I told them that I used my fair use right to transcode the music to another, uncrippled format for interoperability purposes, and what were they going to do about it. Strangely enough, I never received a reply.

 

[coolVariable]

@lucidass:


<< What's more, Microsoft will make it AN ABSOLUTE FRIGGIN PAIN for you to copy licensed wma's to any other device or computer. ogg has no problems in this respect. >>


Ohhhh! YOU are an important MS-manager that knows stuff like that!!
No?Then how the hell do you know?



<< I'm talking about both. Sure, Microsoft will end up charging an arm and a leg to device manufacturers for the privilege of using a crippled music format, but consumers will by and large be unaware of these licensing fees. >>


Yeah! Right! Mr. BigShot-knows-all-MS-policys-for-the-next-years!!!

So: SHUT UP!!!
You are the reason I will get my baseball bat when I see a snail!
You are WRONG! You don't have a clue what you are talking! You are ignorant! You don't even get it when someone points out where you are wrong! You seem to be pretty stupid! You annoy the heck out of everybody! You are rude to Newbies! YOU SUCK!!! GO AWAY!!!
Got the hint?
GOT IT?

You make me so mad I could beat a rheno to death with my penis!

 

[akiraxtc]

Well coolVariable, what can we say... lucidguy looks like a Linux fanatic so in nature he hates Micro$oft.
In regards of the WMA issue, i think i might chip in a little bit. I only use WMA for my portable players. Seriously, WMA lacks the quality of MP3 and i would never encode my music to WMA to listen to on my computer. I know WMA is much smaller than MP3 that's why it's very suitable for portable MP3 players that doesn't really require very high quality music like the ones in our computer that we play through our bad-asses speakers. So i'd probably don't give a $hit about Micro$soft license put some license protection into WMAs, which can be turned off anyway.

 

[Shudder]

coolVariable: At least he's arguing.. Argument itself isn't bad if you at least throw in some facts. You just said how much you hate him. Basically your ranting did nothing to promote this discussion or humankind.

I don't know if I'm too worried about the whole WMA thing. Some people fall into things like this by buying it, but while it's easy to deceive consumers, it's also easy to scare them.

It'll start out by ONLY being able to play music on that one PC or device.. to rumors going about saying you can only listen to it a few times before it corrupts itself, and so on. People will get scared and it won't happen and through the know-hows and computer in-crowd the general public will find something better. Look at Napster. Almost every computer person, tech-savvy or not knows about Napster. You'd think they didn't know any other thing than Napster and Mp3's.. but look at what's happened to Napster. You have people who could barely install anything before now all of a sudden are messing around with gnutella, winmx, morpheus, etc. Cool. They're Learning.

Music is VERY touchy with everyone it seems. People upgrade their music technology because of the benefit to THEM. People went from vinyl to tapes because you could play it in your car, record other songs, it was smaller, etc. People went to CDs not even for the sound quality, but because you never had to rewind, you could get to ANY song on the CD instantly. Again, they bought new hardware because of THEIR benefit. Now you have groups releasing their mini-tape/discs, wma-only devices.. why? Better sound quality than CD. Easier access of songs than CD? No. Why bother? Ooh, it has encryption.. and that's a benefit to the user how? Exactly. Divx failed for a reason. Loss of freedom was probably the largest.

 

[lucidguy]

<< Divx failed for a reason. Loss of freedom was probably the largest. >>



You're overestimating the intelligence of the American public. Us geeks care about open standards, and open source, and freedom, and all that jazz, the American public doesn't care. The public cares about safety, convenience and value. And Divx didn't offer any of that.

Your credit card had to be entered into a system that kept dialing out to some cenral server without your consent or authorization. That was unsafe. You had to go through multiple levels of authorization just to watch a damn movie. And you couldn't watch it anywhere except the one machine that authorized the purchase. You couldn't watch it at a friend's house. That was inconvenient. And finally, compared to a plain old DVD rental, Divx just didn't offer enough value to justify going through with all those hassles. Strike three, Divx is out.

Crippled music is also going to have trouble offering safety, convenience and value to consumers. The whole licensing crap is counter to how people are used to listening to their music. The buying public will reject crippled technology as long as there is an equivalent technology that functions in line with their expectations. (Ogg Vorbis)

 

[Shudder]

Well right now mp3 offers that to most people.. which is why they've embraced the whole napster thing.

BTW, I don't know much on ogg.. have a link that talks about it? I mean comparisons, charts showing quailty measured by not only the ear but by a computer, advantages, disadvantages.. etc..

 

[Maverick]

I'm not getting into this mp3 argument, but I'm offering Ace some advice.

Whatever you do, do not hose Win2k for Win XP. There's a good chance that you'll be sorry later. I ran XP beta 2 for like 2 weeks without a hitch so I hosed my 2k installation. Big mistake.

It seems that XP beta installations tend to degrade after time and become less stable. After a month and a half I started getting random reboots and freezing. Needless to say it makes no sense because the OS worked beautifully for a while.

This may not happen to you, and by all means...run XP, its a cool OS. Just make sure you still have 2k to fall back on in case something goes wrong.