The Vista Death Watch

[Alessandro17]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2209837,00.asp

 

Microsoft has extended the life of Windows XP because Vista has simply not shown any life in the market. We have to begin to ask ourselves if we are really looking at Windows Me/2007, destined to be a disdained flop. By all estimates the number of Vista installations hovers around the number of Macs in use.

[apowerr]

Man, Ballmer is f*cking up.

[Azurael]

*Waits for the mysterious, Mac forum-inhabiting Microsoft fanboys to come in and slate John Dvorak*

[Alessandro17]

*Waits for the mysterious, Mac forum-inhabiting Microsoft fanboys to come in and slate John Dvorak*

 

[~pcwiz]

What Dvorak says is totally true. I have actually never yet personally seen a Windows XP user upgrade to Vista. I do know people that bought PCs preinstalled with Vista though.

[idividebyzero]

I got Vista Business for free from that whole Power Together campaign in 2006. I would NEVER EVER go back to XP, I hate XP's UI far too much to ever go back to that garbage. Plus I have never had any problems with Vista.

[InorganicMatter]

I have to disagree with Dvorak. Vista is not QUITE as painful to use as XP.

 

That is: it's still a very painful experience.

[mhbas0001]

I have an Acer Aspire laptop that came with an OEM version of Windows XP Home Edition, which I upgraded to Windows Vista in February.

 

On the whole I haven't had a single problem with Windows Vista: It hasn't crashed once, it looks beautiful, and it runs quite smoothly. I can't comment on gaming performance since I don't use this laptop for gaming, but overall the system seems to work quite well.

 

Having said that, for reasons I don't understand, I do occassionally reinstall Windows XP. Compared to Vista, XP feels and looks archaic, and I don't enjoy using it as much as I enjoy using Vista.

 

I will qualify those statements by saying that although I've not had any problems with Vista, I'm sure other people have, but it seems to me that the people having problems with Vista are those who either use it in a way it's not supposed to be used (by tweaking it to extremes), or are the same people who had trouble with Windows XP (the computer illiterates).

 

As for Windows Vista "dying", I don't see it happening. People said the same thing about Windows XP, which quickly became Microsoft's most successful operating system, and, like it or not, by the end of next year the majority of PCs will be running Windows Vista because of Microsoft's sheer dominance over the OS market.

[Forceman]

Lets face it, people have just cottoned on that there are other OS's out there and XP does what is does for them just as good. For the price it's just not worth the upgrade and I've had people say they just dont like it over XP. I personally use it for games, I'd use XP but my wife likes the card games in Vista which are MUCH better than in XP.

[Alessandro17]

I'd use XP but my wife likes the card games in Vista which are MUCH better than in XP.

 

Women! with a very few exceptions they are a disaster with computers

[macgirl]

Women! with a very few exceptions they are a disaster with computers

That is a generalization, and all generalizations are bad, including this one.

[Alessandro17]

That is a generalization, and all generalizations are bad, including this one.

 

That is why I said that there are exceptions.

[wmarsh]

What Dvorak says is totally true. I have actually never yet personally seen a Windows XP user upgrade to Vista. I do know people that bought PCs preinstalled with Vista though.

 

Well I upgraded from XP to Vista. And my opinion is Vista is faster than XP on Core 2 Duo (due to SMP), has unix like security, and unlike XP has never crashed on me.

 

That being true, there are some things that won't run on Vista, so I do maintain an XP install.

[sarahbau]

*Waits for the mysterious, Mac forum-inhabiting Microsoft fanboys to come in and slate John Dvorak*

I didn't read the article, but I learned almost 15 years ago, when Dvorak wrote the back page of MacUser magazine, that he is a bumbling idiot. I don't care if he is bashing Apple or Microsoft - he almost never knows what he's talking about (he may occasionally be right by sheer random luck though).

[Proteo]

...has unix like security...

Whoever told you that, he was cheating on you.

[mhbas0001]

Whoever told you that, he was cheating on you.

 

In actual fact, with user account control there's absolutely no need to run antivirus software, so long as you take the time to read the prompts before you click ok. Nothing can run on a Vista based machine unless it has your explicit permission, and by default, all user accounts run in restricted mode, just like a Unix-based system.

 

I'm pleased to see Microsoft took a page out of *nix's book and added a useful (and powerful) security feature.

[macgirl]

That is why I said that there are exceptions.

Yes, I know, sorry I need to post that

In actual fact, with user account control there's absolutely no need to run antivirus software, so long as you take the time to read the prompts before you click ok. Nothing can run on a Vista based machine unless it has your explicit permission, and by default, all user accounts run in restricted mode, just like a Unix-based system.I'm pleased to see Microsoft took a page out of *nix's book and added a useful (and powerful) security feature.

[mhbas0001]

Something funny?

[macgirl]

just wait.

[mhbas0001]

For?

[tha_toadman]

I couldn't agree more that Vista is the new ME for 2007. Its such a P.O.S. that I don't know where to begin.

 

Well, for the record, I've totally ditched 'Windoze' altogether in my household - the machine of concern though was my wifes laptop. It's her laptop but I told her recently that I'm just so damn sick and tired of spyware/virii/subscriptions/etc that I said "screw it" and I installed PCLinuxOS 2007 for her. Believe it or not, she's enjoying using it, as I've assisted her with finding where stuff is and such. She agrees that it isn't much different than 'Windoze' but then again, she just uses Firefox mostly on it and not much else.

 

I disagree with Dvorak though -- a situation like this WILL help Linux and Mac pick up market share. I just feels like we're getting closer and closer to the day where PC owner's will opt for open-source OSes...either that or else they'll pick up a Mac!

 

BTW, I like the new Mac vs. PC commercial.

[Forceman]

Something funny?

 

I found it purely funny on the fact that unix was mentioned, guess what, OS X and Linux has been using this for what, over 10 years now. UAC identifying a virus, I dont think so.

[mhbas0001]

UAC identifying a virus, I dont think so.

 

Guess again.

 

For the record though, I never stated that either Linux or OS X weren't based on unix code. I use both of them, and I'm familiar with the way they work.

 

Oh, no, UAC doesn't identify viruses, that's not what it's designed to do. It identifies executables that attempt to run with administrative privileges (such as viruses, trojan horses, spyware, etc), and asks for the user's permission to allow them to execute. During the prompt, it gives the user a file name, and a directory, as well as the software company. It's pretty obvious to even the most computer illiterate user that a file with the name "??????" is not safe to run.

 

A little common sense goes a long way.

[Forceman]

Guess again.

 

For the record though, I never stated that either Linux or OS X weren't based on unix code. I use both of them, and I'm familiar with the way they work.

 

Oh, no, UAC doesn't identify viruses, that's not what it's designed to do. It identifies executables that attempt to run with administrative privileges (such as viruses, trojan horses, spyware, etc), and asks for the user's permission to allow them to execute. During the prompt, it gives the user a file name, and a directory, as well as the software company. It's pretty obvious to even the most computer illiterate user that a file with the name "??????" is not safe to run.

 

A little common sense goes a long way.

 

XP does that as well now in SP2, all that stands between you and a virus is a click, it's not like UAC will tell you it's a virus, it just says you shouldn't execute .exe's from email and for all it knows it could be perfectly harmless. I dont like how it does pure guess work to protect you by file names that "might" be unsafe, simply put you still need a virus checker no matter what they guy says in the article.

[mhbas0001]

Windows XP is slightly different, in that it only warns the user about the dangers of executing a file downloaded with Internet Explorer, but it doesn't address the issue of malicious files which might infiltrate your computer through an exchange of media (such as CD or DVDs), or through email messages, et cetera.

 

Although I agree with you to the extent that most computer users either won't bother to read the prompts, or won't understand them, you're pretty safe if you're an experienced computer user who takes the time to read the messages. For example, in Windows Vista if I download an attachment from Windows Mail, before I open it the screen will grey and a prompt will pop up asking me if I should execute the file, and it will tell you the name of the file, the type of file, and the digital signature on the file (I.e. whether it was made by Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, or whether it does not have a digital signature), thus, as a user, it's pretty easy to tell that a file signed by Microsoft is safe to run, but one that isn't signed, and has a file name of "Bank.exe" or "????.exe" is not safe to run.

 

I don't use realtime virus protection myself, but I do a manual scan every so often, and scan individual files I think are suspicious before opening them.