Posted on 12/01/2006 7:49:10 PM PST by Zakeet
As he took the stage to usher Windows Vista to market, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week tried to put the software's laborious birth behind him. The company's 71,000 employees -- and the entire PC industry, for that matter -- could be excused for breathing a sigh of relief, too.
"It's an exciting thing to finally be here, and that's probably all I'll say about the past," Ballmer said at the unveiling from Nasdaq's cylindrical high-tech building in New York's Times Square. Office 2007 and Exchange Server 2007 also were introduced, and 30 more products will follow over the next year, all part of the same technology wave. "This is the biggest launch we've ever done," Ballmer said. Microsoft will spend $450 million marketing it all.
Yet for all the design missteps, overly ambitious plans, and personnel changes that led to a five-year lag between versions of Windows, questions about the future of Microsoft's software are top of mind for customers and partners. Ballmer swears to never let as much time elapse between Windows versions; the question now is how the company can keep churning out innovative products on a compressed timetable.
"Vista is the last of the Big Bang operating system releases from Microsoft," Credit Suisse research analyst Jason Maynard wrote in a report last month.
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
Bunk. You are not. Thinking, that is.
OS X is UNIX.
Thanks Dude! I just downloaded Process Explorer and Autoruns as you suggested, and we already have CCleaner. My wife, who is the real techno-geek in the household, runs CCleaner and a couple of anti-spyware programs everyday, so i think that my problem runs deeper, probably in the registry somewhere. Anyway, I do appreciate your help and have printed out your instructions here for my computer records.
From what I've read in the current Newsweak, there is not much new function in the new Office. There's only so much you can do with a word processor and spreadsheet. The new Office has a new user interface totally unlike all of Microsoft's other products. That is, no more "File, Edit, View, Help" menu bar; instead, they have "ribbons".
2K definitely is. Plus it doesn't have the Delayed Write Cache bug.
It's become quite rare to need to rebuild a kernel, so I don't think that should be much of a concern. In the last year, I haven't done any kernel rebuilds. In the last two years, just twice, one of which was to add Xen support (which I doubt most people would have all that much interest in).
You might try the Ubuntu distribution if you want a simple distribution that installs easily on a lot of hardware.
Gee, poor Microsoft. It is tough to sustain growth in a market segment where you have an 85% share and your product never wears out.......
I like Rush Limbaugh's take on Windows 95. "Windows 95 = Mac '89".
I've always like Win2k, but it's time to face the facts, it's on its way out. And what's killing it is that the component providers (modems, nics, video, etc..) will stop making drivers for it. It's just starting now, but will continue and become more pervasive.
I still have my last 2k notebook. I don't use it, but it boots and I keep it around in case I need to pull some data off it. But it was the HW ware that was crapping out. (Batteries no longer hold a charge, wireless is crappy in it)
Me too
My poor little 2.25 g w/ 512 RAM won't run Vista.
Plus the aggravation of virii, etc. and extra money expended fighting them.
I haven't had problems with XP. It rarely crashes. I plan on running it until I upgrade my comp, then I bolt MS.
The MS Money that came with this Dell really sucks though.
In Money97 I could run amortization scheds, see how much savings I would have contributing money monthly for 20 yrs. for instance.
The 'new' improved version won't do it . Maybe if I go online. But I'm not about to put those personal details in the ether.
XP has been one of the best MS OS I have ever used....hope they improve on XP... I understand that the move from XP to Vista is ugly.... Guess I'll stay with XP as long as I can...I have only a few complaints.
The day that MS can put SPAMMERS, SPOOFERS, and VIRUS distributors out of "bidness" I will rejoice.....
There, now their "innovation" is highlighted as to what it is - legal and business and political (not techinical) expertise.
So...I took it out of its bag, just plugged in the components where they kind of looked like they fit, and...turned it on. I remember the room was kind of dark, and the little smiley face mac icon came up, and...then it was a blank screen with an icon of a hard drive. I just sat there and figured it out, and I was completely hooked. The ultimate demonstration of intuitiveness...a brand new technology with no instructions for a user!
I have had discussions with other mac users, and there are a variety of things that make it kind of...well...fun!
There is a polish and attention to detail in the Mac OS. It is not perfect, and there are a few things that Microsoft does better. To be fair, I will give an example (since I am equally comfortable using both): Using a right click to move a file in MS Windows works much better. You can right click on a file to "cut" it and then paste it somewhere else, essentially moving it. That works well, and is how logically it should work. Apple has no analog to that. BUT...they do have a VERY cool feature called "spring loaded folders" where you left click and hold a file or folder to drag it, and you hold it over a directory. The directory "springs" open, and you can drag the file over a folder inside that, and THAT one springs open...you can navigate to all the way to where you want the file to live, and just unclick there and it puts it inside that directory and leaves the window open. If you wanted to back out of a folder (say it wasn't the one you wanted to go into) you just move it outside of it, and that one springs shut back to the previous one. If you are doing this on the same hard drive, it moves it. If you do it on a mapped drive or a separate drive, it COPIES it. (you can move it to a separate drive instead of copying it by holding your COMMAND key down as you release it onto the new drive) You can configure the setting for folders to spring open instantly or after a delay, or...you can hold down the space bar to just make them spring instantly open.
The thing that makes it fun is...Apple doesn't really advertise this. Most users who know about this feature tell me they find out this function by accident (as I originally did), and...they go "huh?" Then they try it again...you get a smile when you realize what it does, and you think..."That is COOL!"
Another example, I found out by accident is, if you have a save dialog window open and you press COMMAND-D, it makes the desktop the save location. Or, if you drag a directory onto the save dialog box, it makes that the save location...or...if you have a removable media such as a zip drive and you plug it in, it makes THAT the save location automatically.
The COOLEST absolutely most useful interface innovation in my opinion is what Apple calls "Expose". By pressing F9, every single window or document open on your screen shrinks down and is displayed simultaneously on your desktop in miniature, and you can click it to make it the active window. Or, pressing F10, only the windows of the active application shrink and are displayed (Very, very useful when working in Photoshop doing compositing and you might have 5-10 different images open!) OR...hitting F11, and ALL windows disappear from the desktop. You can configure it extensively and map it (I have the F9 key mapped to the scrolling button on my mouse so that when I press it instead of rolling it, the F9 option activates! Rather than my explaining it, check out this web page Apple explains Expose-be sure to watch the Quicktime movie in the upper right corner...:) The thing that is really cool is that drag and drop works in Expose between windows...VERY nifty!
An additional point is that Apple implements Drag and Drop VERY differently than Microsoft does...much richer, more intuitive and better in my opinion. A lot of people don't use drag and drop quite as much in Windows, because the behavior is not consistent, and sometimes produces unexepected results. On the Mac, it is consistent throughout the OS and applications.
Along the same lines...Key commands are consistent as well throughout the Mac OS and applications. The same key commands (I am not talking about CTRL-C and CTRL-V, I am talking nearly all key commands) So, in ANY Mac application, hitting CTRL-Q will quit the application. This is not true in Windows. And there is also a consistency in menu construction and placement in Mac OS that is not there many times in Windows. There are some suble differences that throw Windows Users off when they use a Mac, and they can find it a bit confusing. In Windows, when you open a Word document, every single window has the menu items at top such as File, Edit, etc. It is as if each document is a separate instance of MS Word opening. On the Mac, those Menu items take up the top bar of the desktop, and each window is just that, a window with no File, Edit, View or anything else. That throws people for a loop, but is more logical in my opinion.
In my opinion, Mac OS is FAR superior at multitasking...my PC is somewhat spotty, and it is a 2GHz with 1GB RAM so it isn't a slouch, but it is not as facile as my Mac. I once did an experiment to see how much it could take, and I had an unbelieveable amount of stuff open before it began to bog down on me.
Also...don't listen to what people say about Windows being just as secure and safe as a Mac...it isn't so, and it isn't just due to the lower marketshare of Macs. When you turn on your PC for the first time and set your personal account up, it sets you up as equivalent to a "Root" user. That means you can do ANYTHING to that PC. And that ain't good. On the Mac, you need to jump through a few hoops to be a Root user. Plus, all services and ports on the Mac are turned OFF by default when you set it up. This is a good and secure thing.
On a Mac, for the most part, installing and uninstalling applications is not fraught with the same dangers as it is on a PC. Have you ever wanted to install or uninstall an application and thought "What is this going to do to my PC...Gulp..." Much rarer on a Mac.
I do support on both PC and Mac, and well...viruses and spyware...BIGGEST problem, hands down.
But the bottom line is, and as many Mac users might have difficulty putting it into words, the OS is more...well...organic. It somehow has a feeling of a living thing or personality to it. Windows is more...machine like.
Premium does not require a dual core processor or 2 GB ram. I'm running the RC2 version of Ultimate on a machine with an AMD64 3400 processor, 512 MB ram and a $50 graphics card. It runs fine with all the cool Aero Glass eye candy.
Granted, the limited ram means a lot of disk cache use when task switching. Up it to one GB ram and it should run as fast as XP.
Unless it respawns. Then he'll need Hijack This and Killbox and a strong prayer.
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