Computer OS preference

And that will make it less likely to have a power supply failure. It will not address the majority of the reliability problem which is the actual operating system.

Nothing was forced onto Microsoft here. They decided to offer it because they wanted to push Vista sales. If you buy Vista Business (as they require for the downgrade) and downgrade to XP pro it counts to them as a Vista sale not as an XP sale. Microsoft was early on were very concerned about having enough Vista sales to 'prove' that Vista was being adopted.

 

Microsoft was VERY reluctant to offer "downgrades"

Microsoft will also prefer not discussing how many VB machines are "downgraded" to XP Pro

 

Is XP still an option, or are we forced to go 'Pro'? I want nothing to do with Vista of any flavour, and don't need the remote desktop feature of XP Pro.

 

With Windows 7 coming out in a month or so, I doubt XP is an option any more.
Frankly, I prefer Vista to XP, when you aren't trying to attach 3-7 year old peripherals.
Microsoft was reluctant to offer the downgrades, but it became clear that they would get more business if they did. Once they realized that they were very happy to do so.
It will be interesting to see if they learned from the mistakes with Vista and were able to use that experience to produce a better product with Windows 7.

 

ound:

 

Folks like Tiger Direct still offer OEM versions of XP Home. If you get a new desktop or laptop with Vista Business, you will receive XP Pro, SP2. The new OEM versions of XP Pro are SP3

Yes, the OEM of XP Pro SP3 will still be available

Haha, you're funny!

 

FWIW, I upgraded to the newest version of VMWare Fusion (2.0.5) and was able to activate XP in emulation mode without talking to any folks at Microsoft (in India or Redmond) so I now have OS X 10.6, Ubuntu 8.04, Win 2k Pro, Win XP Pro as possible OS(s) on my MacBook Pro.

 

I don't see why people find the idea that MS is capable of learning from errors and making a better product.
Most people would agree Windows 95 was better than Win 3.1.
And that 98 was an improvement over 95.
Now, ME was a disaster, then most would agree XP was an improvement over 95/98 or ME.
For me, Vista was an improvement over XP ON A NEW MACHINE. But it certainly had its share of issues, and overall I would say was a step back from XP for MS.
So the hope and suggestion that Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista doesn't seem all that far fetched. Why do people find it funny?

 

You are a dangerous man.

:hail:

I feel so unworthy

Because those of us who were stuck with Vista Whatever on a corporate network, soon learned what a giant POS it was. Seriously, you could be upwind of it and it would STILL smell

For instance, the XP Pro machines needed the LLTD Responder hotfix just so they would show up to Vista machines on the same network. XP SP3 includes that hotfix.

Older switches/routers that didn't handle IP6 and/or UPnP very well, also caused grief. In one case, a remote office the network laser printer couldn't be used by the Vista machines for almost 8 months, until an appropriate driver finally came out

A VPN was completely impossible until the vendor found a workaround to getting the VPN to work on Vista machines

Although Microsoft won't release the information, at least with our company networks, every new machine since Dec has been ordered with Vista Business.

Without exception, all have been "downgraded" to XP Pro

The problem with Microsoft is that they make a lot of promises, then only after the product has been out will they worry about how to actually make the stupid thing work

Anybody remember Windows 98 Second Edition?

 

Both ME and Vista were a clear step back. Vista (on a new machine) was horribly slow and was actually unusable on a directory with thousands of songs in it. It opened in two minutes while an xp machine opened it in 5 seconds. The second open (of the same directory) was instant on an XP machine and took about 30 seconds on the Vista machine. The machine had 2gb ram and a dual core cpu.

Vista is what made me switch to a mac two years ago. XP while buggy and vulnerable was VERY usuable. Vista just kept getting in my way.

 

I have no doubt that Windows 7 will be better than Vista. From what I read, ME was better than Vista. It would be hard for MS to make an OS any worse than Vista.

What people find funny is not the idea that 7 will be better than Vista; it's the idea that MS cares whether it learns anything. MS doesn't have to learn. Businesses will continue to buy MS garbage because the people making the buying decisions don't know the first thing about computers. And MS knows that. And most of the people who buy computers for use at home know nothing about them either. And MS knows that also. That Bill is one smart cookie. He knows that you don't get rich by selling a good product: you get rich by convincing people to buy the garbage you are selling.

 

I must be the one that hasn't had any problems with Vista. I went with it because we were starting to get Vista on some of the machines at work so I wanted to be able to support it, and I was due for a hardware upgrade anyway, so I built a new machine with a quad core processor, 4G of RAM, the whole schmear. All of my other hardware works fine with it. I had one software package that needed a patch for Vista, when I asked the software boys at work about my VPN access, they furnished me with a copy of a Vista compatable VPN package and all was well.

 

I work for a school. When I was young and foolish, we tried Apple. We had problems. Apple's response "You're a school, you figure it out.". No more fruit. We run PC's. This is being written on an HP Tablet PC running Vista. I work with many students and teachers with laptops and the computers in the computer lab, so I help with Vista, XP, and 98. One button fruit users are on their own. Personal favorite OS of all time: Win 3.11. One bell and two whistles, but darn hard to mess up.

 

And when you have trouble with Microsoft, what does their help line tell you?

 

This reminded me of this XKCD comic strip.


My personal experience with Vista was terrible. I don't remember hating an OS that much. I really liked XP and I still use it for work. I remember being very excited when Windows 2000 came out. I remember installing Windows 95 and feeling how revolutionary it was.

I really like Windows 7. I like their new taskbar a lot. It's snappy and doesn't crash and freeze all the time like Vista did. I use 64bit Windows 7 RC as my main computer on PCs.

But the computer I really love and use most is my new MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. I've very recently started programming for OS X. Programming in XCode, Interface Builder, and Objective-C is a quite pleasurable experience. I got that feeling I got when I was 12 and I wrote a tic-tac-toe program in BASIC and thought how awesome it was.

 

Hilarious!

Some questions:

How does Snow Leopard compare with Leopard? Would you recommend I upgrade now, or wait a bit longer?

I used to program in C under DOS. It was great fun. I wrote some big programs that took months to develop. And I wrote little programs when I wanted to accomplish some simple task. I never learned C++ because I left the country to study Spanish around that time, and by the time I had a computer again, it was all event-driven programming, which was too tedious to be fun.

What's it like programming in XCode, Interface Builder, and Objective-C? Does it take the tedium out of it? Is there a low-cost starter package? Is it suitable for casual programming, or is it a large-scale project with a long learning curve? (I was writing simple but fun and useful programs within days of getting my first C compiler for CP/M, but when I first attempted programming under X-Windows I spent a month getting through the first half of the first of eight or ten volumes of the manual, and then gave up.)

 

I did it over the weekend. No problems. From all reports, there have been very few issues with installation. After installation, it checks for known incompatible software and lets you know. I had one incompatibility, for which it prompted me to install Rosetta.

There is almost no visible difference, other than the way stacks show up and are navigated, and quick view of files in the finder. It's mostly under the hood speed and efficiency stuff, making the operating system and safari seem a bit snappier.

 

I feel so sad for you. :madgrin:

 

Actually, Windows 3.11 For Workgroups seemed to work fairly well, most of the time. That was back when an Ethernet card cost hundreds of dollars.

My Vista Ultimate machine I personally built, usually works well most of the time. But I have hardware specs you're not going to find in most Big Box crap machines:

OCZ GameExtreme 1,100 watt power supply
MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum mobo
AMD 9850 Quad Core processor
OCZ SLI memory, 1 GB sticks, 4 GB total
Windows Vista Ultimate 32 bit
BFG GeForce 9800 graphic card x 2

So, this machine is fairly stable and fast. The bug that drove me almost to run amok was that Vista update bug, where the machine was stuck in an endless reboot loop, claiming update 3 of 3 was 0%

For primary internet browsing, I still like using Ubuntu 9.04, with Firefox, Firestarter, and NoScript. Virus? What's that??

 

I only use OS X to browse the net, unless it is a school computer where someone else is responsible to deal with cleaning it up. I avoid IE and use Firefox even on the school computers. Ubuntu + Firefox seemed to work well also, but doesn't have any advantage for me over OS X.

BTW, since we are sort of on the subject, is there anyone surprised by this?:

Microsoft confirms critical unpatched Vista, Windows 7 RC bug