Bad Vista

[M. Worthington]

http://badvista.fsf.org

“Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care”, said FSF program administrator John Sullivan.

[jfrancho]

I haven't used Vista yet, but does "more restrictive" equate to "less user administration" which in Mac land equates to "easy to use"? Maybe MS doesn't quite get it.

[Malakor]

I was running Vista a few weeks ago - needless to say I'm back with XP again. The whole install is 5 times larger than XP and so runs a bit slower, though some apps do open a little faster e.g media player, IE7. They have re-worked the internet stack so browsing is faster, though I couldn't get any of my bittorrent apps to work properly, so it's all a big no-no for me - at least for the time being.

[notsotechie]

I Agree with M.W not a whole lot of program are compatible. they seem to want to run their own program.but they lag to far behind. as .Their are many programs out there that are not Vista compatible.
Also even some hardware are restrictive.
Yup looks like they are heading the way Mac is going.

[brian.austin]

I love information that has no foundation.

Vista is new. Considerably newer than anything MS has done before. Therefore it's different.

The hardware is not "restrictive". There simply aren't a lot of drivers written for native Vista at the moment. Keep in mind that the OFFICIAL launch date for the masses is still three days away. Remember when 95 came out and there were driver issues? Or 2000? It takes a while for things to catch up.

Yes, this sucker is HUGE in comparison to XP and earlier Microsoft operating systems. It's also a big step up in security and graphics capability. And you need some serious horsepower behind the scenes to get the most out of it....same as when 95 and 2000 and XP came out. Why is this a surprise?? Every major upgrade that both Apple and Microsoft have released has required more horsepower.

For years, the public and media have been complaining about Microsoft's lax security on their kernel and core operating system. So they changed it, almost matching the Mac model. So what is everyone doing NOW? Complaining that it's too restrictive and they can't do anything! I love the irony here. FYI, the firewall is TWO WAY now and is probably the cause of some network issues with certain apps. It's a considerable jump in capability from the SP2 firewall.

Incidentally, it IS possible to turn off a lot of the default security settings. I'd recommend LEARNING more about Vista and its new features/capabilities before writing it off. I've had it on one of my machines for over a month (MSDN license which gets things earlier). Aside from some initial hardware issues (new drivers found and updated) and the learning curve, I haven't had any issues. I use it everyday.

[Sidebyte]

I commend M$ for offering an upgraded O/S but not the invasion of privacy that they incorporated in the new distro.* These greedy buttwipes are out to accumulate the entire money universe which is alright in a capitalistic sense but not in their methodology of trying to protect their interests through clandestine, subversive methods.* So much self-protecting unknown cr@p is embedded in the distro that it's virtually impossible to correct errors or even upgrade your hardware.* I change hardware like I do shorts and find it absolutely invasive to have to ask permission to upgrade my OWN machine from some geek in Washington state.

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by Sidebyte

I commend M$ for offering an upgraded O/S but not the invasion of privacy that they incorporated in the new distro. These greedy buttwipes are out to accumulate the entire money universe which is alright in a capitalistic sense but not in their methodology of trying to protect their interests through clandestine, subversive methods. So much self-protecting unknown cr@p is embedded in the distro that it's virtually impossible to correct errors or even upgrade your hardware. I change hardware like I do shorts and find it absolutely invasive to have to ask permission to upgrade my OWN machine from some geek in Washington state.

The amount of money that Microsoft loses is well into the billions, especially with China's lax pirating enforcement. It's an extreme that has no alternatives from what I can see. Maybe you can suggest an alternative?

Due to the new activation measures, I have to set up a special server app on one of my servers now. Every six months, the workstation checks to see if it's still licensed and "activated". If it can't find the server, it goes into the restricted mode. Luckily I have no plans on moving to Vista company-wide anytime soon.

But this isn't the only company using this model. Adobe is moving toward it, too, requiring activation and distribution of Acrobat 8 licenses from a central server (their's or your's, your choice). Adobe Licensing Manager (ALM) hasn't been working very smoothly, however, and they've given us a "pass" on Acrobat 8 until November 2007. Look for more of their products to start following this process.

[Paul Shields]

I've been using it for a while and lean more towards the upsell than upgrade argument (particularly when they are asking for around $500 in the UK to 'upgrade' from XP to Ultimate :O). A lot of the eye candy stuff is just a reskin and the DRM is going to at the least really annoy lots of legitimate users. I also have a couple of legitimate upgrade licenses on their way to me to install at home, so what do I know? .

It'll be fun to dabble with, but personally I'd avoid installing it on any critical HW until things bed in and we can see which way they are going with this.

[Sidebyte]

Originally Posted by brian.austin

The amount of money that Microsoft loses is well into the billions, especially with China's lax pirating enforcement. It's an extreme that has no alternatives from what I can see. Maybe you can suggest an alternative?

Due to the new activation measures, I have to set up a special server app on one of my servers now. Every six months, the workstation checks to see if it's still licensed and "activated". If it can't find the server, it goes into the restricted mode. Luckily I have no plans on moving to Vista company-wide anytime soon.

But this isn't the only company using this model. Adobe is moving toward it, too, requiring activation and distribution of Acrobat 8 licenses from a central server (their's or your's, your choice). Adobe Licensing Manager (ALM) hasn't been working very smoothly, however, and they've given us a "pass" on Acrobat 8 until November 2007. Look for more of their products to start following this process.

My first and only suggestion is that the Federal Govt. of the U.S. invoke the Sherman Anti-trust law and open up the field instead of allowing a monopoly from one greedy company.
As an example, look at the break-up of AT&T and what it did for the consumer in regards to long distance phone service. In the 1950's it cost over $12. USD to call for 3 minutes from Coast to Coast, now 10% of that. Enough is enough, they have accumulated enough of the worlds wealth. Gates stole every bit of technology in their faulty distro's, so put a stop to the greed.

[Paul Shields]

You know, I never thought that me and Sidebyte would ever agree on something - but I think we've found our common cause .

The whole thing reeks of extortion. Good luck to them in recovering their lost billions, but I'm not sure this approach is the one that will win hearts and minds.

[brian.austin]

Originally Posted by Sidebyte

My first and only suggestion is that the Federal Govt. of the U.S. invoke the Sherman Anti-trust law and open up the field instead of allowing a monopoly from one greedy company.
As an example, look at the break-up of AT&T and what it did for the consumer in regards to long distance phone service. In the 1950's it cost over $12. USD to call for 3 minutes from Coast to Coast, now 10% of that. Enough is enough, they have accumulated enough of the worlds wealth.

Bad example with AT&T. AT&T's history doesn't even come close to Microsoft's. Read up on it here first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...egraph_Company

The field already IS open. No one is stopping the development of ANY operating systems. New versions of Linux are developed almost monthly nowadays. Multiple versions of Unix are still in widespread use across the world, especially in government and engineering firms. Microsoft won by marketing and brute force, not government interference (quite the opposite, actually) like AT&T.

The world was looking for one platform. Ever try to compile an app on different flavors of Unix? Royal pain-in-the-butt, especially if the libs are all slightly different. No issues when installing an app on Windows. People WANTED that and Gates won the race.

Gates stole every bit of technology in their faulty distro's, so put a stop to the greed.

Show me one OS since the 1950's that hasn't copied someone else's ideas. You won't find one.

[Sidebyte]

You must be the M$ number one fanboy. Any fool knows that Gates stole the entire concept from Apple. Why do you defend a thief?

[Paul Shields]

Well I think there's a long history of GUI based OS's before Apple - i.e. the pioneering work by Xerox. MS certainly seem to have pinched a few of the OSX features for Vista though.

[brian.austin]

I recognize superior marketing and capitalism at work, Sidebyte. That's hardly a "fanboy". I recognize Microsoft's problems but if you've truly been watching the company's progress over the years, you'll see that the Microsoft of today is a much different place than it was five or ten years ago.

Apparently you're also unaware of the early history between Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft LICENSED the concept of overlapping windows from Apple in the late '80s.

Many of MSDOS's advances in 5.x and 6.x were actually part of a partnership with IBM at the time. Earlier versions stole from DRDOS (which was my favorite). All of them are simply x86 operating systems designed to mimic Unix, which didn't run on x86 platforms at the time.

As Paul mentioned, Apple copied Xerox's interface, which was developed well before the Macintosh hit the market. And lots of different features have been traded back and forth amongst all of the GUI interfaces.

[jslice]

I recently purchased a laptop and it came with Vista Home Premium installed. I would like to share my experience thus far. I got the laptop setup the way I wanted and deleted much of addtional trailware that comes with it. After I installed the new virus program I wanted the left speaker stopped working. I called tech support at Gateway. Guess what no toll free number and the wait was 45-50 minutes. None of the people I spoke with were actual techs so they read to me from manuals, in the end they said to reset my laptop to the origional setting and go from there. Total time for the call 1 hour 50 minutes. A couple of weeks go by and the wireless connection wasn't working. I again called Gateway, waited even longer for customer service and after 2.5 hours, I was told that it was probally comcast's issue. I asked if I could delete Vista and install XP. I was told no, and that the new motherboards have some kind of code for the Vista software which will not let you delete it and install XP. After talking to Comcast I was given a toll free number to call Microsoft Support directly. When the automated system picked up at Micrfosoft it stated that if I wanted tech support I needed to enter my credit card number. I got to a customer service rep and he stated that if you purchase a computer with Vista installed the company that sold it to you has to provide the tech support. Microsoft will only provide tech support if you purchase the software and install it on an existing system, which for most people would involve replacing, hard drives, adding a ram and other upgrades. If that wasn't annoying enough, you really do have to confirm every action and program you want to use. But the security software from Microsoft doesn't catch or identify spyware and other security issues. Sorry for the long response, just wanted to share the frustration.

[golfer]

Good heavens, this is a sham. I just ordered a new computere and made sure to stay with xp pro. Think for once I mad a good descision.

[WayneM]

After reading this I am glad I don't have Vista, it also seems to raise certain questions about the "fitness and merchantability for the purpose the software was sold for" a concept which might have legal implications. However sense I am not an interested party, as I said I don't have Vista, I shall leave this for someone else.

WayneM

[TonyK]

And Apple stole it from Xerox.

Originally Posted by Sidebyte

You must be the M$ number one fanboy. Any fool knows that Gates stole the entire concept from Apple. Why do you defend a thief?

[JDArt]

Originally Posted by jslice

Sorry for the long response, just wanted to share the frustration.

Sorry to hear about your frustrations.

Gee, now I know why I build my own computers.