will Seinfeld convince you to try Vista?

[QuixoticOne]

Excuse me; did I EVER say anything that would even remotely support your idiotic, baseless, presumptuous, and puerile accusations and assertions? No, I did not.

I thought you were nice / helpful considering your assistance with another problem I was having in trying to help someone with their broken PC, and now I see this sort of wholly undeserved BS wherein you've decided for no rational reason to impugn my character and judgement.

For your information, I was referring to *notorious* problems that *many* people have innocently faced with Vista and WGA in specific. Actually IIRC ALL of the problems I've listed with Vista are pretty much in the 'notorious' and 'publically well known / lamented' category with Vista. I really don't need Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb to be suggesting that I'm alone in having problems with the OS and its bugs / limitations, or that the problems are ones of my own creation / stupidity. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have problems due to MS bugs / quirks / limitations every day.

Perhaps the next time you feel like accusing someone of causing systemic problems due to their own fault you should check to see if maybe, just maybe, lots of other people haven't already been PROVEN to be having the same issues through no fault of their own.

Nor does someone have to be engaged in using hacked / pirated software / media to have ample reason to distrust / dislike WGA, DRM, or Vista (or Microsoft) in general.


Perhaps you've heard of Ed Bott, a very famous and well respected IT columnist who seems to echo my sentiments and assertions about widely known / demonstrated problems with Vista / WGA q.v. the following short citations as being exemplary:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=220

If you don't believe him, perhaps you'll believe Microsoft's own admission of Vista activation / WGA bugs:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931573

Last year, when Microsoft announced a new anti-piracy infrastructure for Windows Vista, I was skeptical. Here's what I wrote at the time:

What's most distressing about the SPP announcement is Microsoft's continued insistence that its anti-piracy tools are nearly perfect and that innocent victims never suffer from errors in their code. ? Microsoft insists that "most customers should never be affected by having a non-genuine installation." That reassurance would be a lot more comforting if there wasn't already a solid base of failures in its current WGA program.

And now, only weeks after the retail launch of Windows Vista, early Vista adopters are experiencing a wave of validation and activation problems.
...

As it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. A quick scan of Microsoft's Windows Vista Validation Issues forum turns up many similar examples, with users who paid for a retail key being told that their copy is "no longer genuine" and that the key is in use.

The underlying issues were identified by Microsoft a few days after Vista's release to manufacturing last November and publicly disclosed in this post on the Windows Vista Validation Issues forum:

There are several threads in this forum that refer to Error 0xc004d401 causing non-genuine status or preventing activation. In those threads, we have discussed 3 applications that have been identified as conflicting with Vista software licensing technology (which causes the issue).

The offenders included PC Tools Spyware Doctor (updating to the most recent version fixes the issue), Trend Micro Internet Security and PC-Cillin Anti-Virus (the issue goes away if you install version 14.56 or later), and nProtect GameGuard.

That last product is the killer, as it turns out. This anti-cheating package used in a variety of online games has previously been called out for behavior that resembles a rootkit. The program's action apparently triggers the anti-tampering features in Windows Vista. As I wrote last fall, that's not good news for the user:

The most chilling part of SPP is its new code to detect tampering. As Lindeman explained to me, "If the Software Protection Platform determines that the core binaries of your system have been hacked with, you will get a notification that operating system has been tampered with. Reinstallation is the remedy." And the clock starts ticking immediately. When an anti-tampering warning first appears, you have three days to reinstall or otherwise fix your copy of Windows Vista or shift into reduced functionality mode.

Unfortunately, getting a fix for the GameGuard problem isn't as easy as it should be. According to Microsoft, each game manufacturer has to acquire the fix and then integrate the new version of GameGuard into their product.

In an unrelated issue, on January 30, the date of Vista's retail release, Microsoft published Knowledge Base article 931573, You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required, which lists the following symptoms:

You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required. Although this problem rarely occurs, it may occur during typical use of a Windows Vista-based computer. For example, this problem may occur under one or more of the following conditions:

* You install a device driver.
* You install a program.
* You run a new program.
* You remove a program.

The article goes on to report the reasons that the problem occurs:

This problem may occur because a specific system setting is removed when a program runs with administrative credentials. The removal of this system setting may cause a BIOS validation check to fail. The BIOS validation check is part of the system activation process. Therefore, you may be prompted to activate Windows Vista, even though the system did not previously require activation. For example, this problem is known to occur when you use Intuit QuickBooks 2007. However, this problem may also infrequently occur when you install other programs or device drivers.

Give Microsoft credit for taking ownership of the problem and not throwing the blame back on third-party developers. The KB article contains this unequivocal statement:

This problem does not occur because of an issue in the installed program or device driver. This problem is caused by a system problem in Windows Vista.

The 931573 patch is delivered via Windows Update, but because it's listed as a Recommended update (rather than Critical or Important), it's not installed by the Automatic Updates mechanism.

At this point, there's no telling how many people are affected by these issues. In some cases, at least, the only fix is to reactivate over the phone, a process that involves convincing a support tech that your installation is legitimate, reading a 50-character product ID over the phone, and then typing in a matching 50-character ID.

More details as this story develops.

Update: this story has been edited since its initial publication to correct an error in the date of publication of KB article 931573.

Update #2: Think it can't happen to you? Ask CMP's Alexander Wolfe, who reported his experiences with a copy of Windows Vista supplied directly by Microsoft.
...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=142

Microsoft admits WGA failures ?coming up more commonly now?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 5:00 am

Scrolling through the posts on Microsoft's official WGA Validation Problems forum is like reading accident reports from a multiple-car pileup on Interstate 5. Many of the victims are completely innocent and have no idea what hit them, and cleaning up the mess can be a nightmare.

Even a casual reading of the posts at the WGA Validation Problems forum makes it clear that WGA has serious problems. But Microsoft refuses to share any hard data about WGA installations, making it impossible for independent observers to quantify the extent of the problems. Until now, that is.

With the help of a researcher, I went through a sample of 137 recent problem reports from actual Windows users, posted publicly on the WGA Validation Problems forum. Our research was the online equivalent of listening in to two weeks worth of calls to Microsoft's support lines. The results we found directly contradict Microsoft's insistence that "only a handful of actual false positives have been seen."

According to our analysis, 42% of the people who experienced problems with WGA and reported those problems to Microsoft's public forums during that period were actually running Genuine Microsoft Windows. That's not just our opinion, either. Those statistics were reported by the Redmond-approved Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic utility.

In our research, we discovered that two Microsoft employees have publicly and repeatedly acknowledged that a particular type of WGA false positive is "coming up more commonly now." We found a widely used security tool from McAfee that triggered WGA failures on perfectly legitimate systems. And we read dozens of reports from frustrated Windows users whose systems are running legally licensed copies of Windows XP but who are blocked from receiving security updates via Windows Update and who are blocked from installing premium Microsoft downloads such as Internet Explorer 7 because the WGA tool mistakenly identified their Windows installations as counterfeit.
...

Originally posted by: tcsenter
There is a reason that activation was #1 on his list. What he means is that Microsoft won't give him access to many of these things on his pirated copy of Vista that is using an activation crack or something. Many of those things are blocked or crippled when you either don't or can't [legitimately] activate Windows, or run Vista in reduced functionality mode.

Actually Microsoft-ware in its fully activated and patched state is quite crippled and full of 'reduced functionality' enough for me to denounce it, thank you very much. I prefer UNIX, a real (and free) OS.

 

[rchiu]

Originally posted by: Aberforth
First of all there is nothing wrong with Vista and those who still have XP are trying to remain ignorant mainly because they've seen too much of Mac AD's and Bill Gates haters trying discredit Vista. I think it's a good move by MS promoting vista just like apple.

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

Heh, look who is calling ppl ignorant when you spent $100 bucks just to have pretty desktop. Unlike you, many ppl actually use applications on their PC rather then staring at the desktop. That's why MS is having problem selling Vista, and that's why MS need Sienfeld to sell Vista for them.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Excuse me; did I EVER say anything that would even remotely support your idiotic, baseless, presumptuous, and puerile accusations and assertions? No, I did not.

I thought you were nice / helpful considering your assistance with another problem I was having in trying to help someone with their broken PC, and now I see this sort of wholly undeserved BS wherein you've decided for no rational reason to impugn my character and judgement.

For your information, I was referring to *notorious* problems that *many* people have innocently faced with Vista and WGA in specific. Actually IIRC ALL of the problems I've listed with Vista are pretty much in the 'notorious' and 'publically well known / lamented' category with Vista. I really don't need Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb to be suggesting that I'm alone in having problems with the OS and its bugs / limitations, or that the problems are ones of my own creation / stupidity. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there who have problems due to MS bugs / quirks / limitations every day.

Perhaps the next time you feel like accusing someone of causing systemic problems due to their own fault you should check to see if maybe, just maybe, lots of other people haven't already been PROVEN to be having the same issues through no fault of their own.

Nor does someone have to be engaged in using hacked / pirated software / media to have ample reason to distrust / dislike WGA, DRM, or Vista (or Microsoft) in general.


Perhaps you've heard of Ed Bott, a very famous and well respected IT columnist who seems to echo my sentiments and assertions about widely known / demonstrated problems with Vista / WGA q.v. the following short citations as being exemplary:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=220

If you don't believe him, perhaps you'll believe Microsoft's own admission of Vista activation / WGA bugs:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931573

Last year, when Microsoft announced a new anti-piracy infrastructure for Windows Vista, I was skeptical. Here's what I wrote at the time:

What's most distressing about the SPP announcement is Microsoft's continued insistence that its anti-piracy tools are nearly perfect and that innocent victims never suffer from errors in their code. ? Microsoft insists that "most customers should never be affected by having a non-genuine installation." That reassurance would be a lot more comforting if there wasn't already a solid base of failures in its current WGA program.

And now, only weeks after the retail launch of Windows Vista, early Vista adopters are experiencing a wave of validation and activation problems.
...

As it turns out, that was just the tip of the iceberg. A quick scan of Microsoft's Windows Vista Validation Issues forum turns up many similar examples, with users who paid for a retail key being told that their copy is "no longer genuine" and that the key is in use.

The underlying issues were identified by Microsoft a few days after Vista's release to manufacturing last November and publicly disclosed in this post on the Windows Vista Validation Issues forum:

There are several threads in this forum that refer to Error 0xc004d401 causing non-genuine status or preventing activation. In those threads, we have discussed 3 applications that have been identified as conflicting with Vista software licensing technology (which causes the issue).

The offenders included PC Tools Spyware Doctor (updating to the most recent version fixes the issue), Trend Micro Internet Security and PC-Cillin Anti-Virus (the issue goes away if you install version 14.56 or later), and nProtect GameGuard.

That last product is the killer, as it turns out. This anti-cheating package used in a variety of online games has previously been called out for behavior that resembles a rootkit. The program's action apparently triggers the anti-tampering features in Windows Vista. As I wrote last fall, that's not good news for the user:

The most chilling part of SPP is its new code to detect tampering. As Lindeman explained to me, "If the Software Protection Platform determines that the core binaries of your system have been hacked with, you will get a notification that operating system has been tampered with. Reinstallation is the remedy." And the clock starts ticking immediately. When an anti-tampering warning first appears, you have three days to reinstall or otherwise fix your copy of Windows Vista or shift into reduced functionality mode.

Unfortunately, getting a fix for the GameGuard problem isn't as easy as it should be. According to Microsoft, each game manufacturer has to acquire the fix and then integrate the new version of GameGuard into their product.

In an unrelated issue, on January 30, the date of Vista's retail release, Microsoft published Knowledge Base article 931573, You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required, which lists the following symptoms:

You may be prompted to activate Windows Vista on a computer on which Windows Vista activation was not previously required. Although this problem rarely occurs, it may occur during typical use of a Windows Vista-based computer. For example, this problem may occur under one or more of the following conditions:

* You install a device driver.
* You install a program.
* You run a new program.
* You remove a program.

The article goes on to report the reasons that the problem occurs:

This problem may occur because a specific system setting is removed when a program runs with administrative credentials. The removal of this system setting may cause a BIOS validation check to fail. The BIOS validation check is part of the system activation process. Therefore, you may be prompted to activate Windows Vista, even though the system did not previously require activation. For example, this problem is known to occur when you use Intuit QuickBooks 2007. However, this problem may also infrequently occur when you install other programs or device drivers.

Give Microsoft credit for taking ownership of the problem and not throwing the blame back on third-party developers. The KB article contains this unequivocal statement:

This problem does not occur because of an issue in the installed program or device driver. This problem is caused by a system problem in Windows Vista.

The 931573 patch is delivered via Windows Update, but because it's listed as a Recommended update (rather than Critical or Important), it's not installed by the Automatic Updates mechanism.

At this point, there's no telling how many people are affected by these issues. In some cases, at least, the only fix is to reactivate over the phone, a process that involves convincing a support tech that your installation is legitimate, reading a 50-character product ID over the phone, and then typing in a matching 50-character ID.

More details as this story develops.

Update: this story has been edited since its initial publication to correct an error in the date of publication of KB article 931573.

Update #2: Think it can't happen to you? Ask CMP's Alexander Wolfe, who reported his experiences with a copy of Windows Vista supplied directly by Microsoft.
...

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=142

Microsoft admits WGA failures ?coming up more commonly now?

Posted by Ed Bott @ 5:00 am

Scrolling through the posts on Microsoft's official WGA Validation Problems forum is like reading accident reports from a multiple-car pileup on Interstate 5. Many of the victims are completely innocent and have no idea what hit them, and cleaning up the mess can be a nightmare.

Even a casual reading of the posts at the WGA Validation Problems forum makes it clear that WGA has serious problems. But Microsoft refuses to share any hard data about WGA installations, making it impossible for independent observers to quantify the extent of the problems. Until now, that is.

With the help of a researcher, I went through a sample of 137 recent problem reports from actual Windows users, posted publicly on the WGA Validation Problems forum. Our research was the online equivalent of listening in to two weeks worth of calls to Microsoft's support lines. The results we found directly contradict Microsoft's insistence that "only a handful of actual false positives have been seen."

According to our analysis, 42% of the people who experienced problems with WGA and reported those problems to Microsoft's public forums during that period were actually running Genuine Microsoft Windows. That's not just our opinion, either. Those statistics were reported by the Redmond-approved Microsoft Genuine Advantage Diagnostic utility.

In our research, we discovered that two Microsoft employees have publicly and repeatedly acknowledged that a particular type of WGA false positive is "coming up more commonly now." We found a widely used security tool from McAfee that triggered WGA failures on perfectly legitimate systems. And we read dozens of reports from frustrated Windows users whose systems are running legally licensed copies of Windows XP but who are blocked from receiving security updates via Windows Update and who are blocked from installing premium Microsoft downloads such as Internet Explorer 7 because the WGA tool mistakenly identified their Windows installations as counterfeit.
...

Originally posted by: tcsenter
There is a reason that activation was #1 on his list. What he means is that Microsoft won't give him access to many of these things on his pirated copy of Vista that is using an activation crack or something. Many of those things are blocked or crippled when you either don't or can't [legitimately] activate Windows, or run Vista in reduced functionality mode.

Actually Microsoft-ware in its fully activated and patched state is quite crippled and full of 'reduced functionality' enough for me to denounce it, thank you very much. I prefer UNIX, a real (and free) OS.

That's lots of crap to read. I think you overestimate people's interest in what you have to say.

 

[QuixoticOne]

That's ok, I know it must be hard to keep up when you're illiterate and intellectually challenged.
I really don't expect fools to dote upon my words anyway.

Originally posted by: Smilin
That's lots of crap to read. I think you overestimate people's interest in what you have to say.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

Vista good, anything else bad. (pounds chest)

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Perhaps you've heard of Ed Bott, a very famous and well respected IT columnist who seems to echo my sentiments and assertions about widely known / demonstrated problems with Vista / WGA q.v. the following short citations as being exemplary:

lol! Well that would explain much. Just citing ZDNet alone would have been enough to cast doubt on your level of technical competence or understanding, but describing Ed Bott as a well respected IT columnist and citing Vista flaws that were patched nearly two years ago amount to the proverbial nail in the coffin for both your intellectual honesty and integrity as well.

Very famous he is, as low as that bar is to achieve for Microsoft-hating commentators who don't even try to conceal the ideological basis or origin of their opinions (sounds like someone we know right here on AT Forums).

 

[Chiropteran]

Originally posted by: Zbox

Nope, in fact I didn't even mention XP. But I do maintain that XP edged its predecessors in performance and responsiveness pretty much across the board.

Not true at all. On today's hardware, sure. But when XP was released it's memory footprint and all it's new eye candy was a strain for a lot of current computers. Windows 2000 ran faster and used a fraction of the memory. Windows 98 ran fine with 32MB of RAM, good luck running XP on that.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Zbox
But I do maintain that XP edged its predecessors in performance and responsiveness pretty much across the board.

Everything old is new again.

CSA Research and confirmed by...our tests of the multitasking capabilities of Windows XP and Windows 2000 demonstrated that under the same heavy load on identical hardware, Windows 2000 significantly outperformed Windows XP. In the most extreme scenario, our Windows XP system took nearly twice as long to complete a workload as did the Windows 2000 client. Our testing also suggests that companies determined to deploy Windows XP should consider ordering desktop systems with dual CPUs to get the most out of the new OS.

-- XP significantly slower than W2K

 

[JACKDRUID]

wow...MS is getting desperate...

Originally posted by: Smilin
Wow ... you don't know sh1t about Vista if you can't get any of these running. You need a Mac or two rocks to bang together in morse code or something. If you spent even half the time you bitch RTFM you wouldn't have anything to bitch about anymore.

Do you ever stop spewing FUD? It seems like every post in every thread you participate in. Your seething hatred of Vista is so obvious that nobody takes you seriously even when you manage to have a legitimate point. You're the one becoming a joke. Ease off a bit dude.

umm.. I wonder why this guy wasn't 'moderated'...

 

[F1shF4t]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
That's ok, I know it must be hard to keep up when you're illiterate and intellectually challenged.
I really don't expect fools to dote upon my words anyway.

Originally posted by: Smilin
That's lots of crap to read. I think you overestimate people's interest in what you have to say.

Why post year old activation issues? Just from your posts its easy to see that you are biased.

The only time i've had to reactivate was when I replaced the mainboard. Every other time there were no issues whatsoever with changing gfx cards, HDDs, cpu, ram or other pci cards. Sometimes 2+ items at a time.

DRM has been discussed to death already. Don't play protected content and all is good, you'll never see it. And guess what without it you would not be able to play the content anyways, so don't blame microsoft/vista for that, blame the companies/artists etc who put DRM in the content.

The vast majority of the issues/problems with vista that people are having is because they are too missinformed/stupid to figure something out. Thats not to say there aren't any genuine problem with software compatibility or other problems, because there are.
XP is not perfect itself and still also has a lot of incompatibilities to some software even now. Linux is not worth discussing, untill it can run most of the software out there.

Each OS has its uses, and its up to user preference to decide which one they want to use. Pointles to install vista on old hardware and not much point not to install it on new hardware. Unless you have some specific reason not too, not just FUD spread by missinformed people.

I don't really care about marketing, make my own mind up about something after testing it.

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Isn't Apple coming out with BluRay support in the upcoming 10.5.6 release?

 

[QuixoticOne]

Why post year old activation issues?

Because a lot of people had problems with them, and a lot of people still do.
See Microsoft's forum for people having problems with it; it gets posts every day.

It is perfectly fair to talk about even its past problems if your point is that Microsoft didn't execute the product development, deployment, support, marketing, and quality control processes very intelligently / effectively. Of course they can keep improving it with patches, service packs, et. al. but they shouldn't have had that many problems with it to begin with if they hadn't taken a half-baked product and rushed it to market. It is like building on a house of cards, you can keep adding features, but if your foundation is not so stable and well planned, you're likely to continue to have problems.

Look at the internal Microsoft emails disclosed in the "Vista Capable" investigation; a lot of Microsoft's own internal managers thought that they botched Vista's design and release! Here is what one senior Microsoft manager heavily involved with Vista's development said about Vista -- I think nobody reasonable could suggest that he was speaking from a position of ignorance about the quality or features of the product, nor could it be reasonably suggested that he was intrinsically biased against Microsoft / Vista!

Jim Allchin was Co-President, Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft. After 17 years with the company, he retired on January 30, the day Vista shipped to consumers.
He shared overall responsibility with Kevin Johnson for the division of the company that includes the Windows and Windows Live Group, Windows Live Platform Group, Online Business Group, Market Expansion Group, Core Operating System Division, Windows Client Marketing Group, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, and the Server and Tools Business Group.
...
From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Subject: losing our way?

This is a rant. I?m sorry.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn?t translate onto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn?t show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.

I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday We need a simple fast storage system.
LH [Longhorn ? now known as VISTA] is a pig and I don?t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of ?scenario, simple, fast? to heart.

A pile of internal emails (PDF) between Microsoft execs have surfaced as part of a suit against the company. The suit alleges that the company mislead customers in 2006 labeling PCs "Windows Vista Capable." And to judge by the emails from Microsoft execs, Microsofties agreed with the plaintiffs. One exec, Mike Nash, writes that Vista turned his $2,100 PC into nothing but an "email machine." In another, exec Steven Sinofsky confessed his Office team didn't start work on a Vista version until late 2006 because "No one really believed we would ever ship."

Just from your posts its easy to see that you are biased.

You claim that I'm biased as if that either explains or disqualifies my perspective. I've got opinions about Vista, and they're often not favorable. That is from personal experience and research. Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs certainly didn't pop up in my office one day and offer me cash to dislike Vista. I certainly wasn't significantly prejudiced against it other than by a general dread of hoping they didn't repeat / perpetuate past mistakes I've encountered in other products like XP, Outlook, et. al. As I learned the details of the facts, costs, features, limitations, et. al. I formed more comprehensive opinions about where I felt it disappointed me. If I thought it was wonderful, I'd have posted that opinion instead. If Vista solves a problem I have, I'll boot it; more often than not I do not because other solutions solve my problems more effectively. If I've developed a bias, it is as a result of negative experiences with it. You'd develop a bias against being whacked in the head with a stick if someone did that to you quite often, wouldn't you?

The only time i've had to reactivate was when I replaced the mainboard. Every other time there were no issues whatsoever with changing gfx cards, HDDs, cpu, ram or other pci cards. Sometimes 2+ items at a time.

I think I activated it enough when my credit card number deposited some cash into Microsoft's bank account.
Needing to keep "phoning home" or calling in to re-request permission to use what you've already paid for isn't what I'd consider to be a feature in high esteem regardless of how well it usually works. I don't think it is much their business what my hardware configuration is or when I reinstall it. Where is this activation / reactivation / DRM nonsense going to stop? Use your OS -- register/activate. Use your video games -- register/activate. Play music -- register/activate. Use photoshop -- register/activate. Does every little thing we do with our PCs need to be authenticated, analyzed, questioned, reviewed, and approved with some central server somewhere? That's a bit Orwellian for my taste.

DRM has been discussed to death already. Don't play protected content and all is good, you'll never see it. And guess what without it you would not be able to play the content anyways, so don't blame microsoft/vista for that, blame the companies/artists etc who put DRM in the content.

I'll never see it? I'm paying a DRM tax every time I buy a video card, CPU, motherboard, operating system, CD, DVD, TV, VCR, et. al. whether or not I want DRM or any of their content. They spend millions or billions on these misbegotten schemes and they pass all that cost right down to the consumer directly or indirectly, sometimes even through actual government taxes / fees. They even made it impossible for years to back up PCs cost effectively by monopolizing the hardware industry to prevent recordable CD and DVD drives from being sold to consumers as opposed to only big businesses. Even if one didn't care about music / movies one could still not buy the very hardware one needed for PC backups due to their political machinations and industry manipulations. In some places you must pay a music industry tax on blank CDs, DVDs, tapes even if you have no interest to use them for anything but your own personal data / creations.

DRM is the reason (or at least a major one) I can't get decent device drivers for my video cards under LINUX because they added all the DRM into the hardware / software and they don't want to reveal how any of it works, but yet they don't themselves support the other platforms with very good quality and complete drivers and tool sets. If it was not for DRM we'd have better cross platform hardware compatibility.

The vast majority of the issues/problems with vista that people are having is because they are too missinformed/stupid to figure something out. Thats not to say there aren't any genuine problem with software compatibility or other problems, because there are.
XP is not perfect itself and still also has a lot of incompatibilities to some software even now. Linux is not worth discussing, untill it can run most of the software out there.

Well that's true of computers in general. Many people are simply ignorant of the proper procedures to use them and they predictably have problems. However Vista is marketed to home users and casual business users. It is not a "server" or "developer" oriented operating system product in general. People are supposed to be able to easily discover how to use it, it is supposed to be intuitive, highly backward compatible, highly discoverable, very comfortable to use, feature rich, and so on. I'd say that in terms of technical capabilities it is a bit better than XP in many ways, and in terms of maturity / stability, significantly worse in some ways. But it has also been in development / planning for 5+ years at the cost of millions of dollars and programming efforts of thousands of developers. IMHO they haven't made all that much progress for such a time and cost. Sure they have accomplished a few nice things, a few promising things that need much further development to be truly correct, but they did not meet my expectations of what I feel they should have been able to accomplish / offer given all the time, resources, and opportunities they had.

The fact of the matter is that the "out of the box experience" of Vista Ultimate 64 vs. XP Pro 64 isn't really all that compelling in Vista's favor to make it worth hundreds of dollars more to upgrade to relative to the previous XP version. The OOBE of VISTA Ultimate 64 isn't really even that persuasive against SUSE or UBUNTU LINUX x64 either; add in some free packages like MythTV, TrueCrypt, OpenOffice, and the LINUX box will do all the basic internet, office, email, PIM, database, et. al. tasks better than Vista plus any freeware available from Microsoft for it.

As for LINUX not running most of the software out there, I'd say that is only true in a very skewed perspective. UNIX (which LINUX is a flavor of) was out there solving real industrial and commercial scale problems with a very mature software ecosystem back in the late 1970s and early 1980s back when PCs were just a dream and before the first PCs even ran DOS and windows didn't exist at all. Look at all the stuff by SUN, SGI, HP, DEC, IBM, PIXAR, et. al. that ran on UNIX servers and workstations. All that software is pretty much still out there, and it still for a large part runs under UNIX/LINUX, often much better than anything similar runs under Windows. The only major things that don't run well under UNIX/LINUX are video games, stuff sold by or in partnership with Microsoft, and a few specific software packages like Photoshop, et. al. UNIX/LINUX actually has a vast amount more good free software for it, as well as a vast amount more serious industrial scale software for it as well. Most of the internet servers in the world still run UNIX. Most of the supercomputers in the world run it too. If I want to play video games, I can always get a PlayStation. If I want to run Photoshop, Macintosh does that just fine too.

So, seriously:
you own XP Pro 64. Someone offers to sell you Vista Ultimate 64 for $320 or whatever; why would you spend the money?
you own XP Home 32. Someone offers to sell you Vista Home Basic 32 for $50 or whatever; why would you spend the money?

Each OS has its uses, and its up to user preference to decide which one they want to use. Pointles to install vista on old hardware and not much point not to install it on new hardware. Unless you have some specific reason not too, not just FUD spread by missinformed people.

I've only tried using it on absolutely state of the art hardware, and also very capable mid-range hardware that significantly exceeds its system requirements. Relative to the capabilities of the hardware itself, and relative to competitive offerings like OS-X and LINUX it is not particularly impressive to me in terms of what features it delivers on state of the art hardware given its cost.

As for FUD by misinformed people, well, I've read the "Vista Emails" straight from Microsoft corporate executives bashing Vista for being an under performing pig, half-baked, not in touch with consumer needs, et. al. I'd say I'm in good and authoritative company to be sceptical about its virtues.

I don't really care about marketing, make my own mind up about something after testing it.

As do I.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Dark Cupcake
Why post year old activation issues? Just from your posts its easy to see that you are biased.

Now you've done it. He went from issues patched over one year ago to internal discussions about Vista glitches two years prior to its release. You keep at it, and he'll dig up some reports from Windows 95 as 'evidence' of Vista's on-going problems. lol!

 

[KB]

After Seinfelds Bee movie ad blitz I don't want to see him ever again.

But I can guess what he will say:
"So whats the deal with Vista, ... "

 

[wwswimming]

no, but i'd still like to see Elaine dance again.

i wonder if he'll use the line, "this operating system is Sponge Worthy !"

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne

Why post year old activation issues?

Because a lot of people had problems with them, and a lot of people still do.
See Microsoft's forum for people having problems with it; it gets posts every day.

It is perfectly fair to talk about even its past problems if your point is that Microsoft didn't execute the product development, deployment, support, marketing, and quality control processes very intelligently / effectively. Of course they can keep improving it with patches, service packs, et. al. but they shouldn't have had that many problems with it to begin with if they hadn't taken a half-baked product and rushed it to market. It is like building on a house of cards, you can keep adding features, but if your foundation is not so stable and well planned, you're likely to continue to have problems.

Look at the internal Microsoft emails disclosed in the "Vista Capable" investigation; a lot of Microsoft's own internal managers thought that they botched Vista's design and release! Here is what one senior Microsoft manager heavily involved with Vista's development said about Vista -- I think nobody reasonable could suggest that he was speaking from a position of ignorance about the quality or features of the product, nor could it be reasonably suggested that he was intrinsically biased against Microsoft / Vista!

Jim Allchin was Co-President, Platforms and Services Division of Microsoft. After 17 years with the company, he retired on January 30, the day Vista shipped to consumers.
He shared overall responsibility with Kevin Johnson for the division of the company that includes the Windows and Windows Live Group, Windows Live Platform Group, Online Business Group, Market Expansion Group, Core Operating System Division, Windows Client Marketing Group, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, and the Server and Tools Business Group.
...
From: Jim Allchin
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:38 AM
To: Bill Gates; Steve Ballmer
Subject: losing our way?

This is a rant. I?m sorry.

I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means, what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means, what performance means, how important current applications are, and really understanding what the most important problems [our] customers face are. I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn?t translate onto great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. If you run the equivalent of VPC on a MAC you get access to basically all Windows application software (although not the hardware). Apple did not lose their way. You must watch this new video below. I know this doesn?t show anything for businesses, but my point is about the philosophy that Apple uses. They think scenario. They think simple. They think fast. I know there is nothing hugely deep in this.

I must tell you everything in my soul tells me that we should do what I called plan (b) yesterday We need a simple fast storage system.
LH [Longhorn ? now known as VISTA] is a pig and I don?t see any solution to this problem. If we are to rise to the challenge of Linux and Apple, we need to start taking the lessons of ?scenario, simple, fast? to heart.

A pile of internal emails (PDF) between Microsoft execs have surfaced as part of a suit against the company. The suit alleges that the company mislead customers in 2006 labeling PCs "Windows Vista Capable." And to judge by the emails from Microsoft execs, Microsofties agreed with the plaintiffs. One exec, Mike Nash, writes that Vista turned his $2,100 PC into nothing but an "email machine." In another, exec Steven Sinofsky confessed his Office team didn't start work on a Vista version until late 2006 because "No one really believed we would ever ship."

Just from your posts its easy to see that you are biased.

You claim that I'm biased as if that either explains or disqualifies my perspective. I've got opinions about Vista, and they're often not favorable. That is from personal experience and research. Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs certainly didn't pop up in my office one day and offer me cash to dislike Vista. I certainly wasn't significantly prejudiced against it other than by a general dread of hoping they didn't repeat / perpetuate past mistakes I've encountered in other products like XP, Outlook, et. al. As I learned the details of the facts, costs, features, limitations, et. al. I formed more comprehensive opinions about where I felt it disappointed me. If I thought it was wonderful, I'd have posted that opinion instead. If Vista solves a problem I have, I'll boot it; more often than not I do not because other solutions solve my problems more effectively. If I've developed a bias, it is as a result of negative experiences with it. You'd develop a bias against being whacked in the head with a stick if someone did that to you quite often, wouldn't you?

The only time i've had to reactivate was when I replaced the mainboard. Every other time there were no issues whatsoever with changing gfx cards, HDDs, cpu, ram or other pci cards. Sometimes 2+ items at a time.

I think I activated it enough when my credit card number deposited some cash into Microsoft's bank account.
Needing to keep "phoning home" or calling in to re-request permission to use what you've already paid for isn't what I'd consider to be a feature in high esteem regardless of how well it usually works. I don't think it is much their business what my hardware configuration is or when I reinstall it. Where is this activation / reactivation / DRM nonsense going to stop? Use your OS -- register/activate. Use your video games -- register/activate. Play music -- register/activate. Use photoshop -- register/activate. Does every little thing we do with our PCs need to be authenticated, analyzed, questioned, reviewed, and approved with some central server somewhere? That's a bit Orwellian for my taste.

DRM has been discussed to death already. Don't play protected content and all is good, you'll never see it. And guess what without it you would not be able to play the content anyways, so don't blame microsoft/vista for that, blame the companies/artists etc who put DRM in the content.

I'll never see it? I'm paying a DRM tax every time I buy a video card, CPU, motherboard, operating system, CD, DVD, TV, VCR, et. al. whether or not I want DRM or any of their content. They spend millions or billions on these misbegotten schemes and they pass all that cost right down to the consumer directly or indirectly, sometimes even through actual government taxes / fees. They even made it impossible for years to back up PCs cost effectively by monopolizing the hardware industry to prevent recordable CD and DVD drives from being sold to consumers as opposed to only big businesses. Even if one didn't care about music / movies one could still not buy the very hardware one needed for PC backups due to their political machinations and industry manipulations. In some places you must pay a music industry tax on blank CDs, DVDs, tapes even if you have no interest to use them for anything but your own personal data / creations.

DRM is the reason (or at least a major one) I can't get decent device drivers for my video cards under LINUX because they added all the DRM into the hardware / software and they don't want to reveal how any of it works, but yet they don't themselves support the other platforms with very good quality and complete drivers and tool sets. If it was not for DRM we'd have better cross platform hardware compatibility.

The vast majority of the issues/problems with vista that people are having is because they are too missinformed/stupid to figure something out. Thats not to say there aren't any genuine problem with software compatibility or other problems, because there are.
XP is not perfect itself and still also has a lot of incompatibilities to some software even now. Linux is not worth discussing, untill it can run most of the software out there.

Well that's true of computers in general. Many people are simply ignorant of the proper procedures to use them and they predictably have problems. However Vista is marketed to home users and casual business users. It is not a "server" or "developer" oriented operating system product in general. People are supposed to be able to easily discover how to use it, it is supposed to be intuitive, highly backward compatible, highly discoverable, very comfortable to use, feature rich, and so on. I'd say that in terms of technical capabilities it is a bit better than XP in many ways, and in terms of maturity / stability, significantly worse in some ways. But it has also been in development / planning for 5+ years at the cost of millions of dollars and programming efforts of thousands of developers. IMHO they haven't made all that much progress for such a time and cost. Sure they have accomplished a few nice things, a few promising things that need much further development to be truly correct, but they did not meet my expectations of what I feel they should have been able to accomplish / offer given all the time, resources, and opportunities they had.

The fact of the matter is that the "out of the box experience" of Vista Ultimate 64 vs. XP Pro 64 isn't really all that compelling in Vista's favor to make it worth hundreds of dollars more to upgrade to relative to the previous XP version. The OOBE of VISTA Ultimate 64 isn't really even that persuasive against SUSE or UBUNTU LINUX x64 either; add in some free packages like MythTV, TrueCrypt, OpenOffice, and the LINUX box will do all the basic internet, office, email, PIM, database, et. al. tasks better than Vista plus any freeware available from Microsoft for it.

As for LINUX not running most of the software out there, I'd say that is only true in a very skewed perspective. UNIX (which LINUX is a flavor of) was out there solving real industrial and commercial scale problems with a very mature software ecosystem back in the late 1970s and early 1980s back when PCs were just a dream and before the first PCs even ran DOS and windows didn't exist at all. Look at all the stuff by SUN, SGI, HP, DEC, IBM, PIXAR, et. al. that ran on UNIX servers and workstations. All that software is pretty much still out there, and it still for a large part runs under UNIX/LINUX, often much better than anything similar runs under Windows. The only major things that don't run well under UNIX/LINUX are video games, stuff sold by or in partnership with Microsoft, and a few specific software packages like Photoshop, et. al. UNIX/LINUX actually has a vast amount more good free software for it, as well as a vast amount more serious industrial scale software for it as well. Most of the internet servers in the world still run UNIX. Most of the supercomputers in the world run it too. If I want to play video games, I can always get a PlayStation. If I want to run Photoshop, Macintosh does that just fine too.

So, seriously:
you own XP Pro 64. Someone offers to sell you Vista Ultimate 64 for $320 or whatever; why would you spend the money?
you own XP Home 32. Someone offers to sell you Vista Home Basic 32 for $50 or whatever; why would you spend the money?

Each OS has its uses, and its up to user preference to decide which one they want to use. Pointles to install vista on old hardware and not much point not to install it on new hardware. Unless you have some specific reason not too, not just FUD spread by missinformed people.

I've only tried using it on absolutely state of the art hardware, and also very capable mid-range hardware that significantly exceeds its system requirements. Relative to the capabilities of the hardware itself, and relative to competitive offerings like OS-X and LINUX it is not particularly impressive to me in terms of what features it delivers on state of the art hardware given its cost.

As for FUD by misinformed people, well, I've read the "Vista Emails" straight from Microsoft corporate executives bashing Vista for being an under performing pig, half-baked, not in touch with consumer needs, et. al. I'd say I'm in good and authoritative company to be sceptical about its virtues.

I don't really care about marketing, make my own mind up about something after testing it.

As do I.

There you go again. There are a finite (albeit large) number of electrons in the universe. You are intruding on other's quota.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: JACKDRUID
wow...MS is getting desperate...

Originally posted by: Smilin
Wow ... you don't know sh1t about Vista if you can't get any of these running. You need a Mac or two rocks to bang together in morse code or something. If you spent even half the time you bitch RTFM you wouldn't have anything to bitch about anymore.

Do you ever stop spewing FUD? It seems like every post in every thread you participate in. Your seething hatred of Vista is so obvious that nobody takes you seriously even when you manage to have a legitimate point. You're the one becoming a joke. Ease off a bit dude.

umm.. I wonder why this guy wasn't 'moderated'...

Keep things in context please.

 

[F1shF4t]

Because a lot of people had problems with them, and a lot of people still do.
See Microsoft's forum for people having problems with it; it gets posts every day.

It is perfectly fair to talk about even its past problems if your point is that Microsoft didn't execute the product development, deployment, support, marketing, and quality control processes very intelligently / effectively. Of course they can keep improving it with patches, service packs, et. al. but they shouldn't have had that many problems with it to begin with if they hadn't taken a half-baked product and rushed it to market. It is like building on a house of cards, you can keep adding features, but if your foundation is not so stable and well planned, you're likely to continue to have problems.

Look at the internal Microsoft emails disclosed in the "Vista Capable" investigation; a lot of Microsoft's own internal managers thought that they botched Vista's design and release! Here is what one senior Microsoft manager heavily involved with Vista's development said about Vista -- I think nobody reasonable could suggest that he was speaking from a position of ignorance about the quality or features of the product, nor could it be reasonably suggested that he was intrinsically biased against Microsoft / Vista!

Look at any software now days, it gets released before its fully complete and/or bug free. Not saying its a good thing but the users are the best stability test. Every operating system has patches updates service packs etc. XP has 1000+ patches and has been in development since NT days (from 1994 or so) its still not perfect. A lot of the problems with vista is that developers did not update software/drivers even though they had the specs a year or more before release. Look at nvidia driver issues (even though I haven't encountered any of them using x64 betas at that time)

Listning to internal communication doesn't mean jack. Managers and workers have different objectives than whats seen to the consumer. Also the fact that they are managers doesn't mean anything, they could be just as incompetent in using a computer as the general public.

You claim that I'm biased as if that either explains or disqualifies my perspective. I've got opinions about Vista, and they're often not favorable. That is from personal experience and research. Linus Torvalds and Steve Jobs certainly didn't pop up in my office one day and offer me cash to dislike Vista. I certainly wasn't significantly prejudiced against it other than by a general dread of hoping they didn't repeat / perpetuate past mistakes I've encountered in other products like XP, Outlook, et. al. As I learned the details of the facts, costs, features, limitations, et. al. I formed more comprehensive opinions about where I felt it disappointed me. If I thought it was wonderful, I'd have posted that opinion instead. If Vista solves a problem I have, I'll boot it; more often than not I do not because other solutions solve my problems more effectively. If I've developed a bias, it is as a result of negative experiences with it. You'd develop a bias against being whacked in the head with a stick if someone did that to you quite often, wouldn't you?

Being biased and showing your opinion are two different things. I can tell you a number of things that for me vista does better and where it fails. You seem to only mention the negative, especially a lot of things which are mostly associated with FUD spread around or issues that are not related to the topic.

I think I activated it enough when my credit card number deposited some cash into Microsoft's bank account.
Needing to keep "phoning home" or calling in to re-request permission to use what you've already paid for isn't what I'd consider to be a feature in high esteem regardless of how well it usually works. I don't think it is much their business what my hardware configuration is or when I reinstall it. Where is this activation / reactivation / DRM nonsense going to stop? Use your OS -- register/activate. Use your video games -- register/activate. Play music -- register/activate. Use photoshop -- register/activate. Does every little thing we do with our PCs need to be authenticated, analyzed, questioned, reviewed, and approved with some central server somewhere? That's a bit Orwellian for my taste.

This has been bashed to death already in the XP days 7 years ago. While I would like to not have to re-activate, I don't think it'll change anytime soon.

I'll never see it? I'm paying a DRM tax every time I buy a video card, CPU, motherboard, operating system, CD, DVD, TV, VCR, et. al. whether or not I want DRM or any of their content. They spend millions or billions on these misbegotten schemes and they pass all that cost right down to the consumer directly or indirectly, sometimes even through actual government taxes / fees. They even made it impossible for years to back up PCs cost effectively by monopolizing the hardware industry to prevent recordable CD and DVD drives from being sold to consumers as opposed to only big businesses. Even if one didn't care about music / movies one could still not buy the very hardware one needed for PC backups due to their political machinations and industry manipulations. In some places you must pay a music industry tax on blank CDs, DVDs, tapes even if you have no interest to use them for anything but your own personal data / creations.

DRM is the reason (or at least a major one) I can't get decent device drivers for my video cards under LINUX because they added all the DRM into the hardware / software and they don't want to reveal how any of it works, but yet they don't themselves support the other platforms with very good quality and complete drivers and tool sets. If it was not for DRM we'd have better cross platform hardware compatibility.

Don't see how thats related to vista or microsoft. For the large part I don't think they have any say in it. Either they implement DRM and can play the stuff or they don't and every one will start complaining why they can't play something. Now if linux had a large enough user base (including users which don't know anything about comps) it would be a much larger issue.

As for LINUX not running most of the software out there, I'd say that is only true in a very skewed perspective. UNIX (which LINUX is a flavor of) was out there solving real industrial and commercial scale problems with a very mature software ecosystem back in the late 1970s and early 1980s back when PCs were just a dream and before the first PCs even ran DOS and windows didn't exist at all. Look at all the stuff by SUN, SGI, HP, DEC, IBM, PIXAR, et. al. that ran on UNIX servers and workstations. All that software is pretty much still out there, and it still for a large part runs under UNIX/LINUX, often much better than anything similar runs under Windows. The only major things that don't run well under UNIX/LINUX are video games, stuff sold by or in partnership with Microsoft, and a few specific software packages like Photoshop, et. al. UNIX/LINUX actually has a vast amount more good free software for it, as well as a vast amount more serious industrial scale software for it as well. Most of the internet servers in the world still run UNIX. Most of the supercomputers in the world run it too. If I want to play video games, I can always get a PlayStation. If I want to run Photoshop, Macintosh does that just fine too.

So, seriously:
you own XP Pro 64. Someone offers to sell you Vista Ultimate 64 for $320 or whatever; why would you spend the money?
you own XP Home 32. Someone offers to sell you Vista Home Basic 32 for $50 or whatever; why would you spend the money?

Firstly servers and desktops are two different things. For some people it is important that their kid can run some game out of a serial box. Each their own when it comes to uses, and for general use windows has a much larger software base. I know it is a circular debate, if there were more users there would be more software and as such more users etc it still doesn't change the fact.

As I meantioned before there is not much point to upgrade/downgrade unless there is a good reason.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Microsoft has finally learned its lesson,
Vista's proper place in the world is
to be the substance of jokes!

Whereas they'd only have had to pay me $5,000,000 to make jokes about it;
heck I already do that for free! Maybe if they want me to really like Vista they should make it less of a joke!

"No activation for you!" <-Works
"No search for you!" <-Works
"No HDTV for you!" <-Works
"No image backup for you!" <-Works (vhd)
"No SP1 install disc for you!" <- Never tried
"No LCD without HDCP for you!" <-Works
"No unsigned drivers for you!" <-Works (not sure this is a good thing)
"No dual boot for you!" <-Works
"No RDP for you!" <-works as I'm typing.
"No burning ISO images for you!" <-Works (internally go bitch at the DOJ)
"No ultimate extras for you!" <-Got em
"No bitlocker for you!" <-See one above
"No ACLs for you!" <-Works
"No group policies for you!" <-Works
"No motherboard upgrades for you!" <-Works (see #1)
"No virtualization for you!" <-Works

Wow ... you don't know sh1t about Vista if you can't get any of these running. You need a Mac or two rocks to bang together in morse code or something. If you spent even half the time you bitch RTFM you wouldn't have anything to bitch about anymore.

Do you ever stop spewing FUD? It seems like every post in every thread you participate in. Your seething hatred of Vista is so obvious that nobody takes you seriously even when you manage to have a legitimate point. You're the one becoming a joke. Ease off a bit dude.

I took him seriously. Vista is still crap. Ease off your personal attacks, and stop calling him a joke?

 

[Scotteq]

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Microsoft has finally learned its lesson,
Vista's proper place in the world is
to be the substance of jokes!

Whereas they'd only have had to pay me $5,000,000 to make jokes about it;
heck I already do that for free! Maybe if they want me to really like Vista they should make it less of a joke!

"No activation for you!" <-It Works
"No search for you!" <-It Works
"No HDTV for you!" <-It Works
"No image backup for you!" <-It Works (VHD)
"No SP1 install disc for you!" <- OEM or Retail, already incorporated into the OS
"No LCD without HDCP for you!" <-It Works
"No unsigned drivers for you!" <-It Works(not sure this is a good thing)
"No dual boot for you!" <-It Works
"No RDP for you!" <-It Works.
"No burning ISO images for you!" <-It Works (internally go bitch at the DOJ)
"No ultimate extras for you!" <-Got em
"No bitlocker for you!" <-Got It
"No ACLs for you!" <-It Works
"No group policies for you!"<-It Works
"No motherboard upgrades for you!" <-It Works(see #1)
"No virtualization for you!" <-It Works

Wow ... you don't know sh1t about Vista if you can't get any of these running. You need a Mac or two rocks to bang together in morse code or something. If you spent even half the time you bitch RTFM you wouldn't have anything to bitch about anymore.

Do you ever stop spewing FUD? It seems like every post in every thread you participate in. Your seething hatred of Vista is so obvious that nobody takes you seriously even when you manage to have a legitimate point. You're the one becoming a joke. Ease off a bit dude.

I took him seriously. Vista is still crap. Ease off your personal attacks, and stop calling him a joke?

The problem here is Quix continues to spread lies and FUD, even after being corrected. i.e. Correct him that "Yes, you *can* upgrade your Motherboard", and he'll shut up for a little bit. Then come back in another thread with the exact same false claim. Please note the bolded items above - You very well *can* do the things he claims Vista cannot. So yeah - He clearly knows not what he says. Or rather, he very well knows that what he says is false.

Perhaps someone corrects him that early performance differences were due to poorly optimized drivers - He'll be quiet for a little bit. Then in another thread start the same argument again.

http://www.extremetech.com/art.../0,2845,2302495,00.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/har...nce_update/default.asp




Or maybe the topic of the day is acceptance. The numerical fact is that Vista's acceptance rates actually *exceed* what XP ahcieved... Yet he absolutely refuses to accept that. He'll come back, screaming that the world has rejected it.


PC World - "...even Gartner, that prophet of Windows' doom, forecasts that Vista will be more popular at the end of this year than XP was at a similar juncture -- with 28% of the PC operating system installed base worldwide, vs. 22% for XP at the end of 2003"

http://www.pcworld.com/busines...till_have_its_day.html




At the end of the day, it is, and always has been, the exact same hysteria, lies, and asinine predictions as occurred when XP was released. Let's head back a generation, shall we?

Intel upgrades to Windows 2000 six months after Windows XP was released:
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/...chooses-w2k-over-winxp

Sluggish corporate adoption of Windows XP:
http://www.computerworld.com/p...2/0,4814,74276,00.html

Windows XP Slow To Take Hold "...Less than 10 percent of Microsoft's installed base has upgraded to Windows XP since its release last October. That matches a 2001 Gartner prediction that nearly 75 percent of all corporate PCs would still be running Windows 95, 98 or NT Workstation by the end of 2002...
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18829228

Microsoft offers new licensing terms and other incentives to jump-start stalled corporate XP adoption:
http://www.crn.com/it-channel/18821819

Three years after release, XP uptake still too slow:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/softwa...21,39151481,00.htm?r=8

Four long years after XP release, more corporate desktops still using Windows 2000:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windo...-Win-2000-by-Years-End






So yes, it's very hard to take Quix seriously at this point. Whatever credibility he may have had, he threw away making his ridiculous claims. I do have to give him points for persistence, though - At this point many of us are simply tired of arguing with him.




...and massive attribution love to tcsenter for the links!

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Scotteq

So yes, it's very hard to take Quix seriously at this point. Whatever credibility he may have had, he threw away making his ridiculous claims. I do have to give him points for persistence, though - At this point many of us are simply tired of arguing with him.

That sums it up well. He typically wins arguments because he's just more willing to drag it on forever, use lengthy responses (that are often copy pasted from previous arguments), and rehash the same argument he lost over and over until he wins by attrition.

I have on occassion seen him say something intelligent. The problem is I'm no longer listening. His claims become so outlandish that I just can't take him seriously (see the "<-works" list above). For all I know he made some really intelligent posts in the last few days...but he is just too tedious to deal with so I'm mostly ignoring him.

My earlier post was pretty blunt but it was not intended as an outright personal attack. People are laughing at him...and on some level that's not very funny.

I stand by my advice to him of "Ease off a bit dude." He's clearly not a complete idiot and if he would throttle down some it would allow him to make some positive contributions.

 

[tcsenter]

Originally posted by: Scotteq
At the end of the day, it is, and always has been, the exact same hysteria, lies, and asinine predictions as occurred when XP was released. Let's head back a generation, shall we?

Those links and titles were taken from my post in a different thread (or perhaps a different forum). Could I get a little attribution love, please!

 

[KeypoX]

Vista is by far the best OS I have ever used. I have used all the current ones and have been into computers since 3.11.

Leopard is fun but a little weak compared to vista. Same thing goes with linux, just to difficult to do anything that requires programming. Windows has all the programs you can think of. While mac and linux require way to much searching and in most cases they are not even available.

But dont get me wrong linux and mac have there place. But are not for power users or gamers. They fill their markets very well but for the masses windows has got it right.

If you wanna complain about driver issues you are out of your mind. Linux, mac, and xp have far far far more driver issues than vista. Now given mac only runs on their own outdated hardware but, if you are a osx user then you know how long and how shitty mac support really is.

Also leopard runs like shit on anything less than 1gb or ram. As does vista, XP does indeed run well on 256 and 512 but look at what you get. And if you want all the features of vista you are gonna need more ram/cpu in xp.

People can go windows free but man you lose ALOT... why do you think Mr Mac finally runs windows lol

But dont get me wrong i am no fanboy i totally am for market competition to push innovation. But unfortunately there is no competition right now for vista, besides mud slinging companies.

BTW Microsoft gave me office 2k7 and vista business. Thank you Bill

Mac has given me heartache, and linux has given me headaches

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
Vista is by far the best OS I have ever used. I have used all the current ones and have been into computers since 3.11.

that's how i feel about XP. i do have one Vista computer, 6850
running Vista Ultimate 32. it has come in handy. good speech
recognition.

the file management on XP is what "gets" me. that's supposed
to be more effective ? it's more complex & visually cluttered
compared to XP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Microsoft has finally learned its lesson,
Vista's proper place in the world is
to be the substance of jokes!

Whereas they'd only have had to pay me $5,000,000 to make jokes about it;
heck I already do that for free! Maybe if they want me to really like Vista they should make it less of a joke!

"No activation for you!" <-Works
"No search for you!" <-Works
"No HDTV for you!" <-Works
"No image backup for you!" <-Works (vhd)
"No SP1 install disc for you!" <- Never tried
"No LCD without HDCP for you!" <-Works
"No unsigned drivers for you!" <-Works (not sure this is a good thing)
"No dual boot for you!" <-Works
"No RDP for you!" <-works as I'm typing.
"No burning ISO images for you!" <-Works (internally go bitch at the DOJ)
"No ultimate extras for you!" <-Got em
"No bitlocker for you!" <-See one above
"No ACLs for you!" <-Works
"No group policies for you!" <-Works
"No motherboard upgrades for you!" <-Works (see #1)
"No virtualization for you!" <-Works

Wow ... you don't know sh1t about Vista if you can't get any of these running. You need a Mac or two rocks to bang together in morse code or something. If you spent even half the time you bitch RTFM you wouldn't have anything to bitch about anymore.

Do you ever stop spewing FUD? It seems like every post in every thread you participate in. Your seething hatred of Vista is so obvious that nobody takes you seriously even when you manage to have a legitimate point. You're the one becoming a joke. Ease off a bit dude.

I think you need to lay off the coffee or something. I think he was just making jokes about all of Vista features. I didn't get the impression that he was suggesting that those were issues for him.

Personally, I think many of his posts are spot-on.