Guess you weren't paying attention to the buzz at CES this year.Listen, the only people talking about Vista with such anticipation are you guys. Everyone else in the world openly admits that Vista isn't the second coming.
Originally posted by: Quinton McLeod
I thought this thread died already. You people are still discussing this service pac-- err... I mean, OS?
Listen, the only people talking about Vista with such anticipation are you guys. Everyone else in the world openly admits that Vista isn't the second coming.
I'm not saying to not get Vista. I'm simply saying to wait awhile until it becomes bug free and has proven itself. Right now, it hasn't proven itself. In 6 months, Leopard and Fiesty will be out. Plenty of time to see what is what and which OS is cool to migrate to.
mac still dependant on propriatary hardware,
vista has everything and more out of box.
vista is far more than an upgrade, every single thing is either much improved or completely new
perhaps someone can explain how any of the new mac os's or linux distros are any more of a revelution over its previous. by comparison actually all of mac and linux os's are more of a service pack upgrade than what vista is.
Oh please, the only thing completly new that I can see is ReadyBoost and that's a bandaid IMO.
You're pretty blind then.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You're pretty blind then.
No, I read over the list on Wikipedia and nothing jumped out as completely new. Would you care to point one or two out for me?
Originally posted by: BD2003
The sidebar, calendar, photo gallery and speech recognition are completely new. Other parts of the system such as explorer, search, task scheduler and performance monitor are so radically changed that they might as well be new. But it's not the new things that are really important about vista, its the improvements to just about every part of the OS that makes it worthwhile.
The sidebar, calendar, photo gallery and speech recognition are completely new.
Other parts of the system such as explorer, search, task scheduler and performance monitor are so radically changed that they might as well be new.
But it's not the new things that are really important about vista, its the improvements to just about every part of the OS that makes it worthwhile.
I never said otherwise, but you can't claim that Vista is full of new ideas since just about everything in it is an update to an existing Windows component or an implementation of a component from another OS. All of the ground breaking stuff that was supposed to be released with Vista was dropped along the way as the project got delayed time after time.
lol wiki..yeah those are all 100% truth and based on hard evidence
you know those are written by any joe bob right?
anyway, tell me whats completely new in linux or the new mac OS that hast been done before?
at least mac cant say shadow copy.
I never meant this thread to ever be a comparison of Vista to OSX, or Linux. Just to XP.
Originally posted by: NothinmanI never meant this thread to ever be a comparison of Vista to OSX, or Linux. Just to XP.
And you cant expect the general noob user, the corporate machine, the serious gamer, or those that rely on MS Office to upgrade to Linux. Pretty HUGE amount of people.
If true cross compatibility was feasible, then there would vast improvements to all the OSes, MS would have a fire lit under their ass, and it would be awesome for everyone.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Sure I can, at least your second class of users. And a lot of members of the first class wouldn't even notice if you replaced it for them. It's already happening around the rest of the world and it's not surprising that the US will hold out until the last minute, hell we're still using the imperial measurement system. And IMO "serious gamer" is an oxymoron.
In many ways it is, all of the BSDs have been able to run unmodified Linux binaries for years and the WINE and Mono people are working hard to be able to run Win32 and .Net apps respectively but MS seems to take a perverse pleasure in making that difficult for everyone, including themselves because they have to maintain compatibility too.
you mean out of box?? what other os has so many things to offer for so many different types of users, i know suse has alot but you know, out of box its very good for any type of user other than the hardcore enthusiast who thinks oldschool like yourselfOriginally posted by: Nothinman
Well since I can't find an authoritative live on MS' site it's the next best thing. And I have installed Vista and used it a bit and can't say that I noticed anything extraordinary about it.
at least mac cant say shadow copy.
You mean like the OS X "time machine" stuff that's been planned for release in Leopard?
For a small scale or new operation, it might be feasible, but the amount of resources spent on retraining and tech support for a larger corporation would wipe out any financial gains made by switching to linux. Which is the only reason to do it...linux doesnt offer any *productivity* gains to desktop users.
Openoffice just can't compete with MS Office...especially the 07 version.
I can't blame them for making it difficult - they are a business trying to make money here, it's only natural. They've nothing to gain by doing so...just an ugly truth.
But if a version of linux were to come out with *true* cross compatibility with no cavaets, we'd have a war on our hand and I'll be glad to see it.
you mean out of box?? what other os has so many things to offer for so many different types of users, i know suse has alot but you know, out of box its very good for any type of user other than the hardcore enthusiast who thinks oldschool like yourself
no, you dont know what shadwo copy is, its different than time machine which is more of what vista's backup and restore is and vista ultimate/business has the 3rd backup of imaging and then theres system resotore which is just for registry/system backup i believe while backuprestore does folders/documents..etc, shadow copy is specifically for reverting to a previous document/picture..etc in case you fudge the new copy and delete old.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
For a small scale or new operation, it might be feasible, but the amount of resources spent on retraining and tech support for a larger corporation would wipe out any financial gains made by switching to linux. Which is the only reason to do it...linux doesnt offer any *productivity* gains to desktop users.
Considering the amount of time spending fixing printers and Outlook by our helpdesk where I last worked that's debatable. And O looks a lot more like Office 97/2000 than Office 2007 does, so now would be the perfect time to switch since retraining is going to have to happen anyway.
Openoffice just can't compete with MS Office...especially the 07 version.
If you say so, I've been lucky in that I haven't had to deal with any office software for any real amount of time.
But it makes more work for them too and thus costs them money for no gains since they too have to maintain compatibility with all of their changes. Most of the people willing to put the time into using WINE to run their games or Office have already jumped ship, MS isn't going to get them back by making things more difficult for them and if anything it'll just make those people want to use Windows even less.
I doubt that'll happen and the obligatory example is OS/2. Years ago OS/2 ran Win311 apps better than Win311 and could also run 32-bit OS/2 apps, it had everything Win311 had and more and yet Windows still came out on top.
And a good current example is OS X. With Parallels you can install Windows and run any Windows app right along with OS X, the next version of Parallels will even have their seamless integration thing where Windows is invisible in the background. And then their next major release is supposed to support hardware 3D acceleration in the Windows guest so that you'll be able to play Windows games on OS X. And yet OS X is still hovering around the same percentage of users as the Linux desktop.
Out of the box is irrelevant for Windows because 90% of it's userbase gets their install from an OEM. And one of the reasons that I use Debian is because of the out of the box experience, with ~19,000 packages in it's software repository I have virtually everything I need after the initial installation.
As I understand it, Shadow Copy's main use in Vista is for the "previous versions" tab on each file which AFAIK is akin to the Time Machine thing in Leopard, although the Leopard interface seems a lot more elaborate for something that should be so simple.
Sure they lose money by making things complicated, but that an investment to maintain their monopoly.
Well, never say never. Firefox managed to break through to a large amount of IE users, and theres no reason that another OS, even open-source, couldnt do so given enough time.
Thats cause you need a mac to run it. When you can run OSX on non-mac hardware, and it manages to have the same hardware support as windows, then we'll have another good fight on our hands. And I think thats likely to happen sooner than it will with linux, and I'll be happy to see that as well. Until then, it's a non issue.
The real issue for me is that I fail to see what makes linux superior on the desktop other than that its free. I'd rather pay for something if its worth it to me. MS Office and DirectX is irreplaceable to me, and Linux is a step behind.
In fact, thats the one thing that's always bothered me about linux - the majority of apps that I've seen are essentially knockoffs of windows/mac apps, "Evolution" (the outlook type app), being a particularly painful ripoff.
We can argue night and day about security and performance differences, but as long as the apps are a generation behind, it's going to make it hard to switch.
While that much software is commendable, I'd cringe at the idea of having to sort through 19,000 packages to find the good stuff.
s there some sort of "best-of" list to thumb through? It'd been a while since I've toyed with linux, I might install a distro on my older box for the hell of it...what package would you recommend?
Thats as I understand it, and I completely agree - the time machine thing is elaborate and unnecessary. Thats my issue with OSX and Macs in general - form over function, to the point of insulting the user. It's shocking to me that the standard mouse for macs in 2007 is STILL one button!
Originally posted by: Nothinman
But in the longterm it'll kill them. Look at computer browsing in Vista, there's now at least two ways to find computers, the new Vista method that's supposedly more reliable and the older broadcast/WINS method for XP and previous. Vista and all later releases of Windows will have to maintain both code paths for probably at least 10 years so that's double work just in that area.
Changing web browsers is a lot less invasive than changing OSes. And there's the fact that most of the FF users actually know what a web browser is and can differentiate between IE and FF, most people have no clue what an OS is or what version of Windows that they're running. Do you have any idea how many times I've had people tell me that they're running "Microsoft 2000" or "Microsoft XP" and I had to interrogate them to figure out if they were talking about Windows or Office?
And that'll never happen because Apple can't afford to give up the hardware sales. And it's only partially true because even if Apple gave up control OS X still has a stigma attached to it that it's incompatible with virtually everything. And on top of that you'll still have to own a Windows license and a copy of Parallels to run them both legally.
The price is only a small part of that, it's a good initial lure to get people to try it but overall the system is much better to use. Frankly I don't see what makes Windows so alluring except for it's game support and IMO most games these days are terrible. I would much rather have OSS software because the support is much better but I have no problem paying for software, I had a VMWare Workstation license since the 2.x days but didn't renew it recently because they made VMWare Server free.
That's because people like you complain that you can't switch until you have seamless replacements waiting for you. Frankly I hate Evolution, it's the buggiest mail client I've ever seen and I'd rather use Thunderbird if I had to use a GUI MUA.
IMO they're a generation ahead, everytime I'm forced to use Windows it's an and overcomplicated and very painful experince.
Time will tell, I suppose. Thats the problem with having the "standard" OS - you have to support legacy forever. I've heard rumblings that the next major version of windows will be a complete fresh start like OS X, but I'll be surprised to see it honestly.
Agreed, but its still a step in the right direction. The exact issue that you mention is the reason why I question the relevance of arguing about why and how linux is better in this thread - it's not that most people are too stupid, it's that they genuinely don't care, and until there is a *significant, unignorable* reason to care, they won't.
All the more reason to just ignore OS X when it comes to these comparisons - they are academic comparisons only, and completely irrelvant to the reality.
Well, linux has its benefits, but what would you say to a general user about why they should switch? What would actually appeal to them, and make it worth it for them to take the time to learn it?
I'm more than willing to do something differently, but I'm not willing to do something more difficult. If I'm going to switch from one UI to another, whether its an app UI or an OS UI, I expect an improvement. And command line is just so 1980s.
Considering that I feel exactly the same way as you do about linux, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that point.
I can tell you're coming from the old school here - you want command lines, the lowest resource usage possible, and aren't afraid of working with the details and kinks to get it exactly like you want it.
Originally posted by: Nothinman
OS X wasn't a fresh start, Apple bought NeXT and used the FreeBSD userland.
A fresh start in the sense that legacy apple apps no longer worked.
But it also points to the fact that people use whatever they're given, if Dell started selling boxes with Ubuntu on them people would take them and not notice the difference until they tried to do something odd. And as more people start using things like GMail for email the chances of them doing something odd get smaller.
But there would have to be a good reason for them to offer linux in the first place. I seriously doubt it would take more than a few seconds before most users are completely lost with any iteration of linux, and very, very angry with dell when they find out that they can't run MS Office and such.
Not really, public perception can change over time. Infact Apple is a cool tech company right now and I think I read somewhere that they had something like 30% sales growth last year while the rest of the industry had 10%. Or something like that, I only paid very little attention to the article.
Public perception can change, but until OS X is open to wintel users, it's still a moot point.
The better question is why should you plunk down $200 (or whatever it is) for Vista Home Premium? If you've already got a system then switching to any other OS is going to be more work than staying where you're at so you have the choice of working to switch and paying for a Vista license or working to switch to Linux for free. Non-technical users will be just as confused with Vista as they will be with Gnome, I saw it back when XP first came out and that was a relatively minor change compared to Vista.
I genuinely interested in your answer so I'd like to hear more than a sidestepping, but to answer your question: if what you have works, and you don't care about the new features in vista, then its not worth it.
But theres a lot to like for people who actually do care about the OS, and it'll come packed in with any new system. Whether or not its worth $200 is a personal choice.
It's thinking like that that will keep you stuck in Windows. The command line is very much 21st century, even MS sees this otherwise they wouldn't have put any development time into Monad and Apple wouldn't be making a big deal about OS X being a UNIX workstation. A good example is MUAs too, it took some time for me to get used to mutt but now that I've got it setup the way I want and I'm proficient in the UI I handle my email much more efficiently. It's obviously your decision but it's like learning to drive a stick, it's a bit more work but those who know how to do it swear by it.
There are a few things that work better in CLI, but at least for my daily usage, the GUI is what I need. Those CLI things are relevant to a small portion of users.
The difference is that I used to be a Windows fanboi, but I've seen the light. =) Oh so long ago I ran Win98 and Win2K betas before they were released, I pirated a copy of Win95 OSR2 just so I could convert my filesystems to FAT32, I spent time learning VB and VC++, I ran betas of IE3 and IE4 and I loved them. But during that time I also tried Linux off and on, of course this was back in the RH5 days so it was a lot more rough around the edges, but eventually I figured out how it all worked together and something just clicked. It seems more complicated at first because there's a lot more pieces to it but the individual pieces are a lot simpler so once you you can pick them apart it all makes a lot more sense.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or inclination to migrate to another completely different OS for the hell of it - I need a damn good reason.
And I'm not exactly a MS fanboi - I like the idea of the other OSes, but theyre not practical for me at this time. I really, really want linux to be a legitimate competitor, believe me. If it can do everything you want it to do, then its the right decision for you, but i'd lose far too much that I depend upon by switching.
heh "old school", I didn't even own a computer until 1996 and it had Win95 on it. And maybe it's just a change of perception over the years but I would say that I'm not less concerned with the details than I was back then, generally I let the package maintainers in Debian deal with the minutiae and most of the time it "just works". Yes, I'm technical enough to dig in and fix/change it when it doesn't work but I spend a lot less time worrying about my system now than I did back then.
And I'm typing this on a dual core FX!60 with 2G of memory so maintaining the lowest resource usage possible isn't a priority for me.
A fresh start in the sense that legacy apple apps no longer worked.
But there would have to be a good reason for them to offer linux in the first place. I seriously doubt it would take more than a few seconds before most users are completely lost with any iteration of linux, and very, very angry with dell when they find out that they can't run MS Office and such.
There are a few things that work better in CLI, but at least for my daily usage, the GUI is what I need. Those CLI things are relevant to a small portion of users.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or inclination to migrate to another completely different OS for the hell of it - I need a damn good reason.
And I'm not exactly a MS fanboi - I like the idea of the other OSes, but theyre not practical for me at this time. I really, really want linux to be a legitimate competitor, believe me. If it can do everything you want it to do, then its the right decision for you, but i'd lose far too much that I depend upon by switching.