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Old 18-11-2007, 08:38 AM
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xstream (John)
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Vista Death Watch

Looks like Vista may be on it's last legs. Read this interesting article by John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine.
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Old 18-11-2007, 08:48 AM
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Never really had any problems myself using Vista, I like many of the features on it. I can use all my Astro programs and connections with it without any problems. Only the Toucam had a bit of trouble getting going, but thats fine now.

I agree some things with vista are a bit weird and should be fixed but every OS has it's faults. What are we gonna do? write our own OS?
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Old 18-11-2007, 08:51 AM
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According to who?

Wotalotanonsense. If he reckons that Microsoft are going to dump Vista on his heresay, I think he'd better conduct a reality check. Lesson 1: Take a lot of what JCD says with a huge grain of salt. This is the same journo who canned IBM (at all levels from their mainframe business down) for years during the 80's because he lost his job there. I'm never sure that this guy doesn't write to glorify his "standing" in the tech community rather than be a watchdog for we poor humans who are forced to buy software put out by big nasty corporates.

Did he work for Microsoft too?

I'm a Mac and Unix/Linux user. I've been lulled back to Microsoft for a while BECAUSE I find Vista OK. XP and everything before it were rubbish operating systems and I've had never-ending failures and instability problems with them since Windows 1.0. At least my Vista desktop has been up and running since the day I bought it without ONCE going down for any reason.

Here I am defending Microsoft... (I thought it'd never happen.....)

Last edited by Omaroo; 19-11-2007 at 08:43 AM.
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Old 18-11-2007, 08:54 AM
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A very interesting article, I wonder what path MS choose to take.

I am happy with it, but my only gripe is that I can't use my LPI with it but that is a Meade problem and they are not in any hurry.

Cheers

Last edited by Ric; 18-11-2007 at 08:57 AM. Reason: added a bit more
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Old 18-11-2007, 09:20 PM
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I agree with JD in the respect of cost and too many versions, Its a problematical scenario for users at best... Just supply the bees knees and be done with it...

S
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Old 18-11-2007, 09:31 PM
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Not surprised, from all accounts of the people I know that have it on their machines, they hate it, and has caused them much frustration.

Leon
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Old 18-11-2007, 10:32 PM
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umm!

I don't have vista on either machine. When I bought my laptop, vista wouldn't run MYOB or work my printer because the drivers hadn't been developed yet. So I'm wondering if this might have something to do with sales. I haven't tried running anything other than windows, and I try to reformat as often as I can. Sadly though I've only just reformatted for the second time this year.
Go windows!!

Brad
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Old 18-11-2007, 11:35 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by xstream View Post
Looks like Vista may be on it's last legs. Read this interesting article by John C. Dvorak from PC Magazine.
Basically Vista needs 2gb to be happy, after that it is fine. Remember that XP has been around for over 5 years and is quite stable. Vista will be the same in a year. I have it on one of my laptops and with the extra memory it is fine.

And 2gb of ram can be had for about 80 bucks so what is the big deal?

Paul
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Old 19-11-2007, 03:15 AM
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Just image if Apple released their OS for the PC they would get a lot of new users and money and give old bill a run for his money.... They already have the hardware covered now don't know why they haven't done it. Linux has come a long way in the desktop and you cant beat the price.
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Old 19-11-2007, 06:26 AM
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Remember that XP has been around for over 5 years and is quite stable. Vista will be the same in a year.
Yep - we quickly forget that XP was dubbed "XPerimental" for quite a while until it stabilised. I get the feeling that it's newer users of windows that are making the disparaging remarks because they haven't seen this development/release/stabilisation cycle before.
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Old 19-11-2007, 06:30 AM
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MS has too much invested in Vista to dump it. It's not a "quick and dirty" OS like "ME".

Yes, many users don't like it and many businesses haven't taken it up. They wait for the bugs to be ironed out before they commit to new software that may effect their business.

That's why many businesses have stayed with XP. I have and will continue to do so..at least for now.

XP is still offered by Dell
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Old 19-11-2007, 06:34 AM
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I really haven't followed Vista because I've had no reason to - I'm not getting a new computer and am not upgrading (work is still on XP).

So what exactly is new and great in Vista anyway?
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Old 19-11-2007, 06:42 AM
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If you want a good snapshot of the billion and one upgrades to the core of the operating system - go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technic..._Windows_Vista to get an idea about the scale of this upgrade. If any humans can do all of this and get it right first time they are, well, inhuman.

The amount of effort to have carried this off - at least to a packageable deliverable phase, would have been incredible. I respect the direction and know that the level of investment will see it stabilise.

Just the fact that Vista now supports symbolic links within the file system is tantamount to Windows finally being able to be taken seriously in the networking world because it can natively cooperate with Unix..

For those users who refuse to upgrade their hardware in order to cope (the cheapest it's ever been to do so), and want to judge the OS on hardware it wasn't meant to run on - your argument is properly invalid. The OS was NOT released with a promise that it would work on your typical home PC without compromise - so how can it be held against them if you are having problems with it?

Last edited by Omaroo; 19-11-2007 at 07:31 AM.
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Old 19-11-2007, 06:57 AM
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Thanks Chris, looks pretty interesting.
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Old 19-11-2007, 07:42 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Omaroo View Post

For those users who refuse to upgrade their hardware in order to cope (the cheapest it's ever been to do so), and want to judge the OS on hardware it wasn't meant to run on - your argument is properly invalid. The OS was NOT released with a promise that it would work on your typical home PC without compromise - so how can it be held against them if you are having problems with it?
I am experiencing a similar problem. One of our customers want to use a version of our software that was released in 2004 as it has been running in a number of their other stores since then and so want to have them all the same, fair enough I guess. However, the software has a small bug that prevented it from working with their new system. As a result I had to make a new build of the three year old software to release to them (the fix consisted of changing just one character from more than 100,000 lines of code). Of course we need to continue supporting this old version. If they find it has other problems in the future, they need to realise that in 3 years many bugs have been fixed and new features introduced. Fixing them in the 3 year old version is not a good solution.

So if you want to use something old, you can, but don't complain if it doesn't work with stuff that never existed when it was created. Could Holden fit ABS to an FJ?
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Old 19-11-2007, 08:12 AM
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Remember that XP has been around for over 5 years...
I only switched from Win2K to XP last year. I guess at this rate I might switch to Vista sometime around 2011!
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  #17  
Old 19-11-2007, 08:23 AM
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Quote:
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Yep - we quickly forget that XP was dubbed "XPerimental" for quite a while until it stabilised.
Hi Chris, I remember being told around that time by various IT people to avoid XP at all costs and that it would never last.

What Microsoft should have done was release the code or whatever it is they do to allow the software companies to build the drivers for their software. That way there would have been a lot less confusion and complaints.

Cheers
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  #18  
Old 19-11-2007, 08:28 AM
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Vista

It's not surprising that there are growing pains. But then again, some OS in the past were true burdens for users (Windows 98 comes to mind, at least to my memory...). Just because Vista is out now, no one should feel obligated to switch over if they are doing okay with XP. I could not find any feature of Vista which promised dramatic or practice-changing improvement over my current XP, and, furthermore, developers of Astro software - a market sector I'm sure did not appear high on Microsoft's radar of when considering the impact on their market - would need time to adapt and reconfigure their software so users have a painless experience when upgrading. The fact is, I'm hearing all kinds of grumbling from users on various forums, and while you could say it's their fault for not realizing this possibility or for not knowing enough about the software to make it compatible, the point is there IS grumbling. People are not finding life better, but rather worse. It's no slur on Microsoft, I appreciate they have to keep moving forward, and at some point I'll switch over to Vista...when the majority of my software will work out-of-the box on Vista, and when I upgrade to a computer with more memory to accomodate Vista. Then I'll enjoy the purported advantages.

thankfully computer vendors put pressure on Microsoft to still supply and support XP for awhile...My new Dell laptop will come with XP..

Scott
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  #19  
Old 19-11-2007, 08:31 AM
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Quote:
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What Microsoft should have done was release the code or whatever it is they do to allow the software companies to build the drivers for their software. That way there would have been a lot less confusion and complaints.
The point is Ric - that they most certainly did. Even as a punter, I had a beta copy 18 months before release. It's just pure laziness or bad business that software and hardware vendors whose products RELY on the existence of Windows sit back and think that they can't or wouldn't be bothered to conform to new technology. Late alpha, beta and release candidate versions were offered to developers and software/hardware vendors for ages. If they didn't bother to take te offer up they deserve, quite frankly, to be bearing the brunt of disappointed users today - not Microsoft.

I remember someone here a while back arguing that it was unfair on these busineses for MS to keep marching ahead. What a lot of crock! It's THEIR business to keep up with progress if they want to play the game. That'd be like a backyard fibreglass company complaining that they're going out of business still supplying spoilers for VL Commodores.

Crikey - I've got to stop this. I'm starting to sound like a Microsoft evangelist - and that's coming from a Linux/Unix/Mac user. Sheesh!

Last edited by Omaroo; 19-11-2007 at 08:42 AM.
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  #20  
Old 19-11-2007, 08:48 AM
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No worries Chris, I didn't know that about the beta being out. In that case it's as you say, up to the companies to move forward.

Cheers
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