Post by: Ben on April 05, 2008, 11:45:36 AM
http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9911470-56.html
Post by: Manedwolf on April 05, 2008, 11:53:00 AM
What a ripoff. I am SO glad I didn't switch from XP to Vista. Looks like Vista will be another Windows ME.
Will be?
Post by: Brad Johnson on April 05, 2008, 11:57:23 AM
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.
Scrambling to cover the dismal reception that Vista's received is more like it. Until they have a product that works from day one on existing networks, they are going to have the same negative reaction from the business community.
Brad
Post by: Manedwolf on April 05, 2008, 12:01:04 PM
I go in, I turn it on, I do work all day, I turn it off. I turn it on, I do work all day, over and over. It just is sort of THERE. No unpleasant surprises, no fighting. Network is there. Printers are there. Software works. Tiger to Leopard did not destroy my productivity. Not much changed on the surface.
People who have upgraded to Vista on PCs lost a lot of productivity time fighting with the machine instead of working. There were major bottlenecks as they got things "fixed" again and again, and they still need to give a file to someone else to print on some of the printers.
Even people who upgraded software to Office 2007 discovered fun things like that Outlook 2007 doesn't use IE's HTML engine to render HTML emails anymore. It uses Word's HTML engine, which is a broken throwback that can't even understand GIF89a.
What is Microsoft doing? Do they not realize they're chasing AWAY people who just want to get their work done without a fuss?
Post by: MechAg94 on April 05, 2008, 01:34:33 PM
Post by: Standing Wolf on April 05, 2008, 03:10:49 PM
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What is Microsoft doing?
Microshaft is doing the same thing it's been doing since DOS days: churning out CrapWare".
Post by: Boomhauer on April 05, 2008, 03:24:58 PM
I still don't see how a manufacture churning out electronic turds the way MS does gets to be huge and stay in business. The only stuff microsoft "made" that was worth a damn was some games that had been done by independent companies and purchased by MS. They've never written anything worth a damn. They are like the Century Arms of the computer world...
The only reason I use XP is that I have too, which results from software compatibility issues and technological idiocy on my part.
I try to use independent programs as much as possible- Firefox blows the socks of IE.
Post by: Gewehr98 on April 05, 2008, 04:07:00 PM
Post by: Boomhauer on April 05, 2008, 04:10:38 PM
But then again, I switched to XP shortly before Vista was released...after XP had been out for a while...enough to build up a long list of patches for it though...
Post by: Gewehr98 on April 05, 2008, 04:11:41 PM
Post by: The Annoyed Man on April 05, 2008, 04:27:51 PM
Post by: Cromlech on April 05, 2008, 04:38:47 PM
Post by: Manedwolf on April 05, 2008, 04:40:22 PM
I have ordered a laptop with Vista installed, and that will be for all my DX10 gaming needs (plus it is actually more expensive to get XP installed instead these days). I shall keep XP Pro x64 on my main desktop rig for a fair while yet, it is damned stable.
Have fun with those drivers!
I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?"
Post by: RevDisk on April 05, 2008, 06:39:12 PM
I have ordered a laptop with Vista installed, and that will be for all my DX10 gaming needs (plus it is actually more expensive to get XP installed instead these days). I shall keep XP Pro x64 on my main desktop rig for a fair while yet, it is damned stable.
Have fun with those drivers!
I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?"
Yea, Vista drivers are a bit ... less than optimal. Especially the video drivers. I believe only one company has a class action against them at the moment, so I suppose it could be worse.
Couple folks have paid me to install XP on "Vista only" new laptops. It can be done, but Gods what a nightmare. My 'trick' is to get a list of every friggin component ANYWHERE in the laptop and find drivers for an XP machine that uses the same chipsets. Same chips end up in a lot of vastly different hardware. That'll eventually dry up, but I suspect it'll last until the next version of Windows is released.
Personally, over my dead body will Vista be installed in my company. Any user that asks, I offer to rip out half their RAM, underclock their processor, and turn on all the flashy desktop figures XP has. There ya go, you're upgraded to Vista. But you can still actually get work done. My biggest complaint is not of a technical nature. I could upgrade someone from Win2k to XP with minimal issues. Downgrading our work force to Vista would require at least a couple hours per user of training to get them functioning. Plus x hours total of calling the Help Desk to ask how to do this or that. That would probably end up costing us several times the OS price alone. Add in hardware upgrades, buying new software to replace old software that doesn't run on Vista, etc?
Post by: zahc on April 05, 2008, 09:40:11 PM
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I'm no Vista fan. When XP is no longer supportable, I'll go to some flavor of Linux.
What are you waiting for? The only catch with linux is hardware support, which is quite good but merely imperfect, and games.
Any version of *dows seems positively primitive to me compared to linux. It's actually fascinating hearing of all the things that *dows users do...antivirus programs, adware and spyware removal (not as an emergency thing but as maintenance), disk fragmentation (what's that?), restarting after installing programs (wtf, is it 1973?), paying $200 (or any amount) per computer for the priviledge, etc.
I used to run xp in VirtualBox so my wife could run a certain program. Installing it on the virtual machine was a flashback to 1998 for me. It's incredible Vista could be so bad that people still want to run it.
Post by: Finch on April 05, 2008, 09:45:29 PM
Post by: SomeKid on April 05, 2008, 10:35:49 PM
Post by: Gewehr98 on April 05, 2008, 10:59:19 PM
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What are you waiting for? The only catch with linux is hardware support, which is quite good but merely imperfect, and games.
Trick question, right?
Probably because the majority of my Windoze apps don't do well under Linux without the WINE emulator, (let's add a clunky software layer, shall we?) and while I like Corel's WordPerfect suite, it's not what runs the business world yet. As an MCSE and contract IT consultant, I love playing with the various flavors of Linux, but I also am painfully aware that it's not everyman's OS, nor is it even that close yet. And yes, I play Brothers in Arms - Earned in Blood from time to time. My own customers get XP Pro, and I'll keep that going as long as I can. Vista is purposely off my radar, until at least a Service Pack or two comes out, plus drivers and compatibility with software that runs fine on XP.
This IBM quad-Xeon workstation I'm on right now has a removable hard drive cassette, and I run either an XP Pro or Ubuntu hard drive, depending on what I want to do. It was a lot of fun getting Ubuntu to recognize the ATI FireGL 4 video card, and while I realize there aren't a lot of monster AGP-Pro video cards and motherboards out there for Linux developers to play with, that bothered me a good bit.
Post by: Cromlech on April 06, 2008, 12:15:58 AM
Have fun with those drivers! I forsee a statement you'll be saying soon while gaming. "Why did it just quit? Why does it keep doing that?"
I know what I am getting myself in for, having hopped on the XP x64 bandwagon back in 2005. Drivers for that were terrible back then, but Vista x64 isn't so bad to be honest. Though I am sure Vista will find a way to annoy me. 
Post by: Manedwolf on April 06, 2008, 05:43:24 AM
Have they made a way for XP/Vista PC games to work on Linux yet?
I have a copy of XP under bootcamp on my Core 2 Duo macbook pro, and it works just fine for gaming. I play TF2 and all on it all the time. Those machines come with whatever the latest Radeon or nVidia card is, they switch back and forth.
Linux is just not ready for prime time, especially in the business world. Servers, sure. Front office? Hell no.
There is one application suite that any business must run, and that's Microsoft Office. Depending on other needs, the other most common is the Adobe creative suite.
Microsoft Office and the Adobe products are available for two platforms. Windows, and OSX. All the programs are absolutely identical on both, as are the files they create. If there's specialized windows-environment programs needed, OSX will run them instantly and transparently in Parallels. In other words...Windows and OSX are the only two OSes that can use all current business applications without fighting.
Linux's hobbyist-made "kind of like" freeware just will not cut it in the business world, no matter how hopeful those hobbyists are.
Post by: mtnbkr on April 06, 2008, 11:27:14 AM
We bought my FIL a Vista laptop for his birthday last year. Since this was right before everyone started offering the option of "downgrading" to XP and because I didn't have time to try and load XP myself, that's how he got it. I did turn off all the visual junk and set the system up in such a way to look like Win2k (as I do with my XP systems as well). That went a long ways towards making it usable, but it still needs more ram than it shipped with. I haven't used it since he got it, but apparently he loves it.
I haven't had any issues with Windows once I left the Win9x path in the 90s. NT4-XP have been rock solid for me. Before that, I was a Linux user (even used it at work, even though it's been deemed impossible).
Have they made a way for XP/Vista PC games to work on Linux yet?
A few years ago, a company called Lodi sprang up to port previously Windows games for the Linux platform. I personally bought the latest version of Civ and Quake from them because I liked the games and because I wanted to support them (this was around year 2000 or so). They didn't last long. Not because the games were crap or anything (actually, they worked great), but because nobody bought anything. I'm quite certain the "software wants to be free, man" community stole, I mean shared the software rather than buying it.
Chris
Post by: Jamisjockey on April 06, 2008, 11:45:01 AM
Vista blows.
Post by: Iain on April 06, 2008, 11:51:24 AM
I'm no Vista fan. When XP is no longer supportable, I'll go to some flavor of Linux.
With the birth of the inexpensive ultra-portable low spec laptops (Eee, cloudbook and many more to come) Microsoft has already announced a stay of execution for XP. Don't think XP support is going anywhere for a good while, it's a perfectly useable OS that a lot of people are comfortable with.
Post by: Sindawe on April 06, 2008, 12:49:17 PM
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I play Brothers in Arms - Earned in Blood from time to time.
No Vista here until GAMES demand it. And then only ONE game wherein I get to follow Monty's lead to capture Berlin and end the war by Christmas '44.
XP does just fine, specially seeing how my sister has had to deal with Vista on her machine.
Post by: JimMarch on April 06, 2008, 12:55:44 PM
Post by: ilbob on April 06, 2008, 01:49:13 PM
Post by: Manedwolf on April 06, 2008, 01:53:26 PM
OpenOffice 3.0 will be out in about 150 days or so. They're promising built-in PDF editing, a serious killer feature. The 2.3/2.4 series out now is very good and almost all the "office app" anybody needs.
It had better be better. A vendor sent me a document that my Office would not open. They said they did it in OpenOffice. I replied that I was going with a vendor that could afford to purchase software.
Post by: Phyphor on April 06, 2008, 03:02:53 PM
I can't imagine anyone voluntarily "upgrading" to Vista. Even if it worked right, it would not be much of an upgrade from XP. There was little or no functionality added.
EXACTLY. The only things they added are DRM and a new interface. Oh, and supposedly now your video drivers can no longer cause kernal crashes. There's also Supercache, which ain't that great IMO.
From what little I've played around with it, it looks to me like there's just more bloat.
Oh, and .NET is considered to be the native API for Vista, not Win32, so Win32 stuff is pretty much emulated.
No thanks.
Post by: mtnbkr on April 06, 2008, 03:07:05 PM
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A vendor sent me a document that my Office would not open. They said they did it in OpenOffice. I replied that I was going with a vendor that could afford to purchase software.
I bet that gave you warm and fuzzies didn't it? No matter the quality of their product, they didn't use your favorite apps. Considering how often I've received documents that wouldn't open properly even though they were created in the same apps I have on my machine, I'd let it slide and ask them to check the format or version. Every time MS changes file formats, I have to wade through this even though *I'm* using Office as well, just an older version.
Then there was the time I had to upgrade to a newer version of Acrobat to read a vendor document...
Chris
Post by: Manedwolf on April 06, 2008, 03:15:03 PM
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A vendor sent me a document that my Office would not open. They said they did it in OpenOffice. I replied that I was going with a vendor that could afford to purchase software.
I bet that gave you warm and fuzzies didn't it? No matter the quality of their product, they didn't use your favorite apps. Considering how often I've received documents that wouldn't open properly even though they were created in the same apps I have on my machine, I'd let it slide and ask them to check the format or version. Every time MS changes file formats, I have to wade through this even though *I'm* using Office as well, just an older version.
Then there was the time I had to upgrade to a newer version of Acrobat to read a vendor document...
Chris
No, they didn't use the STANDARD apps, and really, if an enterprise can't purchase the standard business software, how much faith does it give me in their financial stability? I don't want to call in the middle of a contract and get "We're sorry, this number is not..."
I considered it a prudent business decision, as I did not want to deal with the hassle of recieving documents that I couldn't open easily, and it didn't give me faith in their financial stability as a company. That's all.
Like it or not, Word, Excel and Powerpoint are the standard front office business suite. And if something can't be opened by it, it's a problem!
Acrobat, on the other hand, is an unfortunately entrenched piece of crap with a bloated, crashy reader.
Post by: never_retreat on April 06, 2008, 03:20:24 PM
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It had better be better. A vendor sent me a document that my Office would not open. They said they did it in OpenOffice. I replied that I was going with a vendor that could afford to purchase software.
Why is it bad for a business not to want to give money to bill gates?Why is that a bad business choice?
What they should have done was say it as something ultra low tech like .txt anything can read that.
Hell or a PDF for that matter.
Post by: Manedwolf on April 06, 2008, 03:26:46 PM
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It had better be better. A vendor sent me a document that my Office would not open. They said they did it in OpenOffice. I replied that I was going with a vendor that could afford to purchase software.
Why is it bad for a business not to want to give money to bill gates?Why is that a bad business choice?
What they should have done was say it as something ultra low tech like .txt anything can read that.
Hell or a PDF for that matter.
You can tie goods to the top of a Geo Metro instead of buying a proper van, as well.
If you want to run a business, you need to make decisions that make your deliverables as painless as possible for as many customers as possible.
Sorry, but that's my reaction to that sort. If someone wants a contract from me, they need to be using the big-boy toys. Office, not Openoffice. Adobe Photoshop, not "gimp". And so on. If it makes you feel better, I also axed a vendor for asking me to download and use a strange third-party plugin to see their content. I've also done that for people who used a cheap web meeting solution that kept crashing during a product demo. I was not impressed.
Yeah, I'm cold about that. I don't want to make a mistake in choosing a vendor that loses my company money or screws up some deadline because they vanish overnight. And to me, not having the standard office software sets off warnings. You want to sell to me as a vendor, be perfect, because there's a hell of a lot of fish in the sea.
Post by: mtnbkr on April 06, 2008, 03:35:30 PM
No, they didn't use the STANDARD apps, and really, if an enterprise can't purchase the standard business software, how much faith does it give me in their financial stability? I don't want to call in the middle of a contract and get "We're sorry, this number is not..."
I considered it a prudent business decision, as I did not want to deal with the hassle of receiving documents that I couldn't open easily, and it didn't give me faith in their financial stability as a company. That's all.
BS. You judge a company's financial strength by looking at their financial reports, not by the software they use. That's very amateurish.
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Like it or not, Word, Excel and Powerpoint are the standard front office business suite. And if something can't be opened by it, it's a problem!
It's only a problem in your mind.
Chris
Post by: Regolith on April 06, 2008, 06:55:46 PM
It's only a problem in your mind.
Chris
Chris
BS. It can be a very BIG problem. I'm the production manager for a newspaper, and advertisers routinely send us ads saved in the most bizarre file extensions. despite being told we prefer .jpeg or similar photo format. If we can't get those documents open or can't get back to the businesses in time to request a new ad copy in a different file format, that's lost revenue for us and the company because they can't be inserted into the paper in time. It's been a problem more than a few times, and quite frankly it damn sure makes me not want to deal with those businesses.
If you can't get your act together and make your files/documents easily readable by your clients, you pretty much deserve to lose business. It's called professionalism, and businesses that lack it tend not to last long.
Post by: Perd Hapley on April 06, 2008, 09:57:52 PM
Post by: Iain on April 06, 2008, 11:26:38 PM
I can also create documents in Office 2007 that won't open in previous versions of word. That's been a problem for some who have received stuff from the non-technologically literate who have upgraded to Vista/Office 2007.
I'd be annoyed if a business sent me a document created in OpenOffice that would not open in Office, but only because they weren't competent enough to save it in the proper format.
Post by: mtnbkr on April 07, 2008, 01:38:17 AM
Captain Obvious says, "Maybe software standardization matters more in some businesses than others."
Bingo. And it matters more in some situations than others. Files used in printing newspapers with short production lead times is a different situation entirely than gathering marketing/technical docs for review. There's also a difference between sending the wrong format once by mistake and doing it over and over to a client after being told what to send.
I can also create documents in Office 2007 that won't open in previous versions of word. That's been a problem for some who have received stuff from the non-technologically literate who have upgraded to Vista/Office 2007.
Yup. I ran into similar issues "back in the day". Funny thing is, had Maned's mystery vendor said that was the problem instead of using OO, he probably would've been ok with it. It's all about the bias.
Chris
Post by: Brad Johnson on April 07, 2008, 05:36:10 AM
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BS. You judge a company's financial strength by looking at their financial reports, not by the software they use. That's very amateurish.
Actually, no. Amateurs are the ones who piss away their time getting non-standard apps to work within the system just because they have a beef with "Big Software". They force themselves and everyone they deal with, including clients, to jump through endless hoops in order to be able to say they stuck it to (insert software company/product here).
There's a reason you see standardized apps in most successful companies. The real pros put something in place that allows them to concentrate on their business, not software compatibility issues.
Brad
Post by: roo_ster on April 07, 2008, 05:49:54 AM
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BS. You judge a company's financial strength by looking at their financial reports, not by the software they use. That's very amateurish.
Actually, no. Amateurs are the ones who piss away their time getting non-standard apps to work within the system just because they have a beef with "Big Software". They force themselves and everyone they deal with, including clients, to jump through endless hoops in order to be able to say they stuck it to (insert software company/product here).
There's a reason you see standardized apps in most successful companies. The real pros put something in place that allows them to concentrate on their business, not software compatibility issues.
Brad
Now, that ^^ is freaking hilarious. "Real pros"
We received some docs from some company, let's call it OweinBay*.
Well, OB sends us some .ppt & .doc documents that just flat will not open in MSO200. Turns out that MSO2003 .ppt & .doc are not read-able by MS02000. Caused quite a ruckus until I fired up an ancient version of OpenOffice (pre-1.0), opened the files and saved them in older .ppt & .doc formats that MSO2000 could read.
Also, their collab tools are a re-configuration nightmare.
* Name changed to protect the worthless humps who can't follow their own standards.
Post by: Brad Johnson on April 07, 2008, 05:58:11 AM
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Turns out that MSO2003 .ppt & .doc are not read-able by MS02000.
No kiddin'? Wow, imagine that a newer software version will produce an end result that older versions may not be able to read. That happens occasionally when you implement this thing called "technology".
So they went into the system and changed the default file type to MSO 2000. Big deal. One click and it's done. Beats the living crap out of spending a couple of weeks down because your one-off Stick It To The Man office system won't work with anything.
Brad
Post by: mtnbkr on April 07, 2008, 06:09:24 AM
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Turns out that MSO2003 .ppt & .doc are not read-able by MS02000.
No kiddin'? Wow, imagine that a newer software version will produce an end result that older versions may not be able to read. That happens occasionally when you implement this thing called "technology".
So they went into the system and changed the default file type to MSO 2000. Big deal. One click and it's done. Beats the living crap out of spending a couple of weeks down because your one-off Stick It To The Man office system won't work with anything.
Brad
Except that even OpenOffice files are compatible with their MSOffice counterparts as long as you save them in the same format as MSOffice. One click and MSOffice2000 becomes the default "save as" format. That's why Maned's example is amateurish. The user could simply resave and resend the doc (just as they would have to do if they saved it as a newer version under MSOffice), but he had to have is ego trip. I wonder what his response would have been if they claimed it was Office07 or something...
When it comes right down to it, I'm not against "Big Software" or for it. I use a mix of everything at home and work as long as it does what I need it to do.
I work for a "really big company", one that can make or break smaller venders by buying from or not buying from them. I would NEVER pull a stunt like Maned described because they sent a doc I couldn't read. Having run into this problem many times because of mere version mismatches (not everyone upgrades on the same schedule), it's just not worth the bad kharma.
Chris
Post by: Iain on April 07, 2008, 06:10:15 AM
Big deal. One click and it's done. Beats the living crap out of spending a couple of weeks down because your one-off Stick It To The Man office system won't work with anything.
Brad
Brad
But that's how it is done in OpenOffice. Save as .doc or .xls and thats it.
Post by: Sergeant Bob on April 07, 2008, 06:41:57 AM
You can tie goods to the top of a Geo Metro instead of buying a proper van, as well.
If you want to run a business, you need to make decisions that make your deliverables as painless as possible for as many customers as possible.
You must mean this guy?
Big deal. One click and it's done. Beats the living crap out of spending a couple of weeks down because your one-off Stick It To The Man office system won't work with anything.
Brad
Brad
But that's how it is done in OpenOffice. Save as .doc or .xls and thats it.
Thats probably fine, as long as they are smart enough to do that. I'm sure Maned doesn't have a beef against Open Office in particular. If he has to spend a bunch of time (and time is money) trying to find out how to open people's documents, or go on the intarwebz and download all different kinds of "freeware" in order to do his job, I can't blame him for not wanting to deal with it.
Here's a pretty good word program which is "similar" to Word. Angel Writer
Hey, you get to send files that are unreadable by many clients and stick it to the man at the same time!
Post by: ilbob on April 07, 2008, 08:00:13 AM
I have noticed that the Acrobat reader after version 4 seems to have all kinds of weird quirks. OTOH, it is as close to a standard for the kinds of things it is used for as there is, even with the occasional weirdness.
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on April 07, 2008, 08:50:39 AM
I'm a geek at heart and love *nixes of all flavors, but my home PC has a core OS of Windows XP x64 with 8gigs of RAM. Any toying around I want to do with other OS's is virtualized. I need my computer to WORK when a work emergency comes up, and XP-x64 is by far the most robust and reliable offering Microsoft has ever put out.
I love to bash MS with the best of 'em, but I cannot say anything nasty about XP-x64. It's as close to stable and reliable as you can get in a mainstream package without running Linux. The only drawback I've ever come across is that some extremely old games no longer function. Oh, well.
Post by: Ben on April 07, 2008, 10:03:40 AM
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I love to bash MS with the best of 'em, but I cannot say anything nasty about XP-x64.
Same here, which is what irks me about this Vista and now Windows 7 thing. XP is a fine OS and doesn't need to be sidelined. I admittedly went kicking and screaming from NT3 to NT4 to 2000 to XP, but looking back I recognize improvement with each of those iterations. Vista is a throwback and who knows what Windows 7 will be.
I just don't understand the marketing strategy. If MS is selling boatloads of XP or Vista, what's the difference as long as they're selling product? If people are happier with XP, why not continue supporting a stable and proven package?
Post by: mtnbkr on April 07, 2008, 10:25:01 AM
I just don't understand the marketing strategy. If MS is selling boatloads of XP or Vista, what's the difference as long as they're selling product? If people are happier with XP, why not continue supporting a stable and proven package?
They only sell so many units before market saturation. A new version means a whole new market. People think they have to upgrade even though they can't verbalize exactly why they must upgrade.
Then the other venders get involved and created devices or applications that only support the new version, further pushing sales. That's why we're going to XP as our primary home OS. We're starting to acquire devices that don't work under Win2k, even though Win2k works perfectly well otherwise.
Chris
Post by: ilbob on April 08, 2008, 07:08:27 AM
I just don't understand the marketing strategy. If MS is selling boatloads of XP or Vista, what's the difference as long as they're selling product? If people are happier with XP, why not continue supporting a stable and proven package?
Who knows. Most people get their OS when they buy their system, and it is not as if people are likely to buy a new computer just to get a new OS.Some claim that a new OS tends to result in newer peripherals not being supported by the old OS forcing peopel to upgrade. In reality, most venders support the newer OS as long as their are sufficient units of the old peripherals left in place to make it worth their while. The fact is that computers and peripherals have a life span typically measured at less then 5 years. There is not much sense for the manufacturer to spend a whole lot of money supporting products any older than that.