Is Windows Vista Ready? 'No. God, no.' 578
torrensmith writes "Paul Thurrott answers the question that some IT folks are asking: 'Is Windows Vista Ready?' His answer is not only no, but 'No. God, no. Today's Windows Vista builds are a study in frustration, and trust me, I use the darn thing day in and day out, and I've seen what happens when you subject yourself to it wholeheartedly. I think I've mentioned the phrase "I could hear the screams" on the SuperSite before.' He also addresses the more important question, 'When Will Microsoft figure out what's important?' and to Paul, like most IT pros, its not about when the next OS will be released, it is about having the OS work."
There is a vote on this in the beta program (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If even Thurrott is saying this... (Score:5, Informative)
Stating the obvious. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Of course it's not ready - it's still beta. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course it's not ready - it's still beta. (Score:4, Informative)
The article also raises the question as to why enterprise users are getting Vista first since they typically are slow to update. Perhaps because they're already paying for upgrades? TFA doesn't pose an answer -- the author just says he doubts very many will attempt an upgrade until SP1 and so why not give it to the consumers first.
Re:It is RC1 now... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Vista? (Score:5, Informative)
Things that isn't working anymore on my Vista (Score:3, Informative)
* Sound, since i've installed AC3 codec
* Internet Explorer, god knows when it stopped working, the first thing i've done is install firefox, I think IE detected it and stopped working, it has some personality
* Libjpeg in use with Gaim (nothing appers, ok I like gaim in windows, and it worked fine on XP)
* Network access to other windows machines
* The Bug reporter, that uses some IE functionality
* The video's thumbnails freezes Explorer.exe (i've to set it to details on every folder before it loads thumbs)
* Microsoft Visio with spell checking (type Andre freezes every time you try)
* Emule is writing to a folder that doesn't exists (C:\program files\emule\incoming) but, when i try to open what i've downloaded from emule, it works misterously from the neverland! I still can't find the files.
* Unzip anything, it moves the file inside the zip to the outside, and leaves the zip with 0 bytes (nice way to loose your files)
And the list keep growing everyday, total of 2700 bugs send with the automatic bug report, and can't send manual errors because of the great broke bug report.
Re:linux or windows? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Agreed. My two cents... (Score:3, Informative)
-Eric
XP (Score:2, Informative)
I have only had 1 actual XP crash since it came up, and that was due to a fan dying on the graphics card causing it to overheat.
I've got one lonely XP Pro box on my network and it is very stable and I manage to get a lot of productive work done on it. However, I don't surf the internet with it. The only time it gets to see the internet is behind a NAT'd firewall for updates, then cut off.
I'd argue that if you spend a lot of time online with XP, you will have problems. I credit my XP box stability to the fact I do my surfing with Firefox and Linux.
Re:Anecdotal evidence an argument does not make (Score:4, Informative)
And how many XP boxes have you supported? Just because you have programmed on a box or two doesn't mean there are problems.
Take it from a the peeps who do front tech support on the phones and at the corporate offices who have expirence problems from hundreds and possibly thousands of users on Windows XP... I can't remember these days since I've worked for so many tech houses)
WINDOWS XP HAS ISSUES!
And that is being kind. To be fair it is quite a great deal more stable than Win95, Win98, WinME, but there was some real growing pains between Win2000 and WinXp (so much so many corp IT houses still keep many boxes as Win2kPro)
But have you ever expirenced a dead WinXp TCP/IP stack? Windows 2000 didn't seem to have much of a problem and if it did it could be repaired... May god help you if your WinXp stack went bad in 2001 because no one knew what the hell to do. These days... As long as you have google you can get a tool on a CD pretty quickly to fix this. Not to mention the blaster virus that hit windows before SP2. That got us pretty good.
And supporting USB drivers and crappy firmware locks... Yes I have seen WinXP bluescreen multiple times on multiple computers in corporate environment.
That said...
Windows XP isn't that bad today (given the massive amounts of patches). It saved us a whole heck load of trouble since it has native CD burning software and PPPoE built in and the restore points often saved our butts all the time.
Heck... A decent Dell with WinXP on it is quite stable and chances are you'll not see a bluescreen anytime soon.
But don't you dare tell me that Windows XP never had problems when it came out... Because it did and caused many corporate IT desk, General helpdesks, and computers shop technicians a ton of grief!
Re:If even Thurrott is saying this... (Score:5, Informative)
You've got to be joking. I've traded emails with this guy, and his lack of technical knowledge is surprising. He actually argued with me at one point that Apple's Spotlight was inferior search technology because it requires plug-ins to tell it how to read third-party file formats. I mentioned that Vista's search technology wasn't powered by a goddamn crystal ball and requires the same thing to read third-party file formats. He didn't reply.
Re:Just Plain Bad (Score:3, Informative)
You need DirectX9-class video hardware to use the Aero interface.
Your GeForce4 is either DirectX8 (if it's a Ti series card) or DirectX7 (if it's an MX series card).
Re:Why does he use it then? (Score:2, Informative)
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, yes? You expect he'd be running Fedora to put Windows through its paces?
KFG
Re:There is a vote on this in the beta program (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Then wait (Score:5, Informative)
In my spare time I actually go out and try it. I've posted about some of it over the years.
Making the jump to metal (and I'm talking copper, not iron) is the highest hurdle, even if you already know how it's done. After that it's really all downhill, but not, as most people might expect, because it makes things possible. I can make a drill that will put a hole through a block of granite with nothing but plants and a bit of sand. Metal just makes things so much faster that one man can accomplish more in a given unit of time.
I mean, what if the whole of the world was reduced to the technology of Survivor Island, basically subsistance living?
See that phrase up there; "even if you know how it's done"?
It's the figuring shit out that takes the time. I guesstimate that a group of about 24 people on a reasonably resource rich land and sufficiently motivated to do so could rebuild from standing naked to pre atomics in about a decade, if they already know how shit's done (oh yeah, and if none of them have modern "issues." The big, strong lug is gonna haul stone and five foot two, eyes of blue is gonna spin and weave; and that's the way it is).
To save technology don't save too many things, save knowledge and make the things from it. Turns out that people are really quite capable of making some amazing things from nearly nothing. Who woulda thunk it?
Nor are we always as advanced as we think we are today. See those blue jeans you're wearing? Ancient Egyptian technology, only if he needed to the Egyptian would know how to duplicate them starting with no more tools than his bare hands. If you'll settle for linen instead of cultivated cotton all you need can be found along nearly any riverbed.
That's actually how American pioneers went west. They didn't carry much in the way of clothing because they knew all they needed to acquire more was a riverbed and some time. We're talking fine woven linens here, not crude bearskins or something.
The most prized possession they tossed into the wagon in Conestoga? An axe head. That first bit of worked metal is a godsend.
KFG
This is insightful?! (Score:4, Informative)
As for the second, I doubt you will be allowed to get to define what "easy to use" is. It's not Windows.
MacOS, maybe, but not Windows. I won't say that Linux is "easy to use" (It is, but that's a different
discussion altogether...)- but that it's about as easy to use as Windows, it's just different than it in
some ways and many find that "Different" is "Difficult", whether it is or not.
Is any of your post "insightful" like the mods claim it to have been? Nope.
Re:Then wait (Score:2, Informative)
Note that I mentioned resources?
You get to the point where you start needing petroleum products. .
Why the hell would need those? You're thinking from where you are now backwards. The first twentieth century harpsichord makers were piano makers. They tried to develop harpsichords backwards from pianos.
They sucked.
The harpsichord was developed forwards from the lute. When luthiers turned to harpsichord making the "secret" was rediscovered.
Stop thinking "petroleum" and start thinking "oil" and alchohol. Hydrocarbons.
That last sentence might come as something of a shock to those who have read some of my posts on biofuels, but we're talking a different scenario here.
Same thing with a lot of metals... the easily accessed deposits have been mined out, and the hard to get at stuff requires higher technology...
Now you're talking the "Mad Max" post apocolyptic scenario, which is something rather different than the Survivor Island scenario. Notice how in the movies they discovered something called "junkyards"? Axe heads and refined aluminum are "natural" resources post apolcolypse. You're boot strapping from 1890, only with 20th century manufactured stuff to do it with.
Also bear in mind that "accessable" is often economically defined. Our mass needs define the sorts of deposits we find useful. Many, many smaller deposits are ignored completely, but completely accessable; and useful to 24 people trying to rebuild.
KFG
Re:Considering their recent acquisitions: (Score:5, Informative)
I'd say they sell more than the occasional bit of hardware to sell over $24 Billion worth in 2005. And that's down from 2004's $31 Billion.
But you are correct saying services is where the money is. IBM made over $47 Billion in revenue from their services division last year.
To put those numbers in perspective, Microsoft's revenue for the entire company was $39 Billion.
Re:Then wait (Score:2, Informative)
Not that I've ever come across, no. I'm a bit of a strange bird, with a strange background and some strange ideas. I mean, just how many home schooled with semi-traditional Zapotec Indian physicist, luthiers who dress like an ancient Egyptian while prancing around in the forest and married an anthropologist, but eschewed academia are there?
Let's just say our conventions are "intimate."
The knowledge isn't exactly forgotten, but it is dispersed and somewhat incomplete. A lot of it is the result of academic research, but academicians are strange birds who often know very important things that other people don't, but get it all wrong because they don't know some simple things that everybody else does.
And of course they typically only publish for other academicians.
Thor Heyerdahl started changing that, but then Thor wasn't exactly held in universal high regard for having done so.
Cable televsion has actually helped here as it's created a few knowledgable people who can smelt and pour copper for the cameras and such, but with the move to "All psychic ghost hunters for Bible secrets all the time " "science" programming I'm afraid that trend may not grow.
Some of the knowledge is in the hands of the survivalists, who are really strange birds. Their essential problem is that they look at their information from the point of view of *Survival(tm)*. Really, all they're doing is "walking through the woods without dying," something any juvenile chipmonk can manage quite nicely (until they get eaten) and virtually all of their ancestors did. They just called it "living," without layering too much macho bullshit onto it.
Some of the knowledge is in the hands of the Back to the Land people, who are strange birds, but at least generally nice, if slightly deluded, folk who do not understand tech at all, even the sort they use, and do not want to.
And some of the knowledge is still being used every day by "native" peoples. They can be a bit closed and xenophobic, with good reason.
I'm just a guy who has moved among all these groups (and several others I haven't bothered bringing up), who don't actually talk to each other all that much, at one time or another, as well as through the halls of high tech.
The survivalists and the Back to the Land people actually hate each other's guts. The "natives" distrust the anthropologists studying them and are prone to play practical jokes on them, or even outright lie, said jokes and lies getting recorded as Truth(tm). The various natives are isolated from each other, so you've got "flint and steel cultures" and "fire piston cultures"; and the physicist/engineers never look at much beyond their blackboards, cyclotrons and computer terminals in Boston and Berkeley.
But it's not like the information isn't out there and I'm not the only one who has pulled it a bit closer together. I've seen other people who've realized that if you've got some sticks and stones and some copper wire and magnets you've got a generator, but you'll need to know how to make a bow drill before you get it running to the point where you can run your electric drill.
I've declined a few attempts to get me to write an autobiography, which would include some of this stuff I guess. I dodged 20/20. I've declined attempts to get me to put out a newsletter or put up a website. I obviously post a lot here, but I don't have that particular itch to scratch. In fact the idea of it makes me feel a bit "itchy."
I'm currently being pursued a bit by a biographer and a film maker. We'll see if one of them manages to catch me or not, but I really do just like to go about my life quietly, even if I do seem to make little "splashes" here and there while I'm about it.
And to sort of, kind of, edge this thing back full circle; sometimes a compiler and vim really is all you need for your
Re:Apparently none of you... (Score:3, Informative)
A lot depended on the hardware it was running on, or rather, the drivers for whatever hardware it was running on. I saw Win95 setups on apparently identical machines from the same manufacturer, and it was rock solid on some (until a less than entirely well-behaved app was launched, i.e. any Win95 app!), and fell over whenever somebody looked at it on others. Then one would discover that the "identical" machines were bought in batches three months apart, and the newer ones had a revised motherboard with a couple of apparently trivial chip changes, but the same drivers, and those drivers periodically decided that they didn't like something on the newer board. The manufacturer would thus update their drivers, and advise that the update be applied to all machines of that model, after which the previously unstable machines would be fine, and the ones that worked before started to misbehave.
So while the majority of Win95 machines were indeed unstable, some lucky people with certain hardware / driver combinations were able to run it over extended periods without any problems. Note that these were not necessarily systems which shipped with it, as some of those were the worst offenders stability-wise (same with Win98, which initially seemed to have had even more stability problems than Win95).
Re:If even Thurrott is saying this... (Score:2, Informative)
A Spotlight model where you write an importer that decides what metadata matters?
Do you mean an Indexing Service model where you write an importer that decides what metadata is available etc.?
An importer implementing the interface IFilter, the same interface that Vista will use?
IFilter which has been in use for more than half a decade, and several years prior to Spotlight?
MS have been there, done that. They wanted to move *beyond* the "Spotlight model" (that is to say, the model that they shipped long before Spotlight was ever even conceived) because they felt at the time it would afford greater flexibility and capabilities.
At this point in time it now very much appears that this WinFS-style indexing is for one reason or another unworkable (probably the biggest issue is that it's just not all that useful), so with Vista they're sticking with the old model. But they're not fucking copying Spotlight. Spotlight *is* the copy.