Posted on 12/13/2006 8:22:40 PM PST by Zakeet
After five years of starts, stops, executive shuffling, feature rethinks and delays, Windows Vista is finally complete. It’s available to corporations already, and starting Jan. 30, it’s what you’ll get on any new PC. Its programmers, who probably haven’t seen their families in months, will have an especially merry Christmas this year.
So after five years, how is Windows Vista? Microsoft’s description, which you’ll soon be seeing in millions of dollars’ worth of advertising, is “Clear, Confident, Connected.” But a more truthful motto would be “Looks, Locks, Lacks.”
Looks
Windows Vista is beautiful. Microsoft has never taken elegance so seriously before.
Discreet eye candy is partly responsible. Windows and menus cast subtle shadows. A new typeface gives the whole affair a fresh, modern feeling. Subtle animations liven up the proceedings.
If the description so far makes Vista sound a lot like the Macintosh, well, you’re right. You get the feeling that Microsoft’s managers put Mac OS X on an easel and told the programmers, “Copy that.”
Here are some of the grace notes that will remind you of similar ones on the Mac: A list of favorite PC locations appears at the left side of every Explorer window, which you can customize just by dragging folders in or out. You now expand or collapse lists of folders by clicking little flippy triangles. When you’re dragging icons to copy them, a cursor “badge” appears that indicates how many you’re moving. The Minimize, Maximize and Close buttons glow when your cursor passes over them. There’s now a keystroke (Alt+up arrow) to open the current folder’s parent window, the one that contains it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
they are already on the net... look around...
Vista RTM has already been released, and leaked....
Yeah, but I've never gone wrong with a program from Panthip Plaza.
But, I'll go legit if I buy a laptop and get the discs via the new coupon promotion.
As for Microsoft Office? Its dead, I'd rather use Open Office, and its free (and better).
I just wanted to see what the final version was like, I don't like pirated stuff anyhow.. i'm gonna get the real deal when its available.(its good) the beta versions were eating memory like crazy this final version seems really good.
AVG Free Anti-Virus also works on Vista.... Same for Paint.net(photo editor) Zip Genuis.it 7(free winrar/winzip program) will be Vista compatible... pretty sweet deals...
I still can't get AVG to work on my system after a nasty virus attack. I've killed the virus (thanks to the free services of tomcoyote.com), but it won't install anymore.
I am running a crappy one calle avira, and I replaced my mobo and it has its own firewall that is better than most out there.
but seriously, I'd use gparted then reinstall a fresh image its much quicker. :P
www.majorgeeks.com may have some free things to help you out...
I'm running a free one in XP Pro, when I get my Vista, I'll switch back to AVG, I find it to be the best free one out there.
I just want DX10 and a compatible card for Flight Sim.
I just bought a 46 inch LCD HDTV, my computer will send out a 1080i signal to the TV, it looks amazing.
How?
How is being slower than XP (unless you turn off the advanced graphics, and sometimes even then), better?
How is having Wordpad in Vista unable to open the same MS Word files that can be opened by XP's Wordpad, "better?"
How is a larger, more bloated OS "better" at reducing downtime, reboots, and OS errors?
How is being unable to save the stocks in your stock ticker, "better?"
How is being inconsistent in screen command button placement, "better?"
have you used it? ok, I have and am... it is.
The questions were all "How" is it better in each instance.
Just claiming that it "is" better is useless fluff.
Be specific or give it up.
Oh, here's one article on Zune: "at the Virgin Megastore in New York's Times Square two circular displays sporting Zune players with earphones attached were unmanned that morning, save for store employees restocking supplies." http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2059178,00.asp
Looks: Get rid of 'em. I've got almost all the graphical nonsense in XP turned off, and I imagine I'll have to do the same in Vista. For people who are actually trying to accomplish tasks rather than look at pretty screens for the sake of pretty screens (e.g. tech writers), spending $500 for a graphics card and waiting for your computer to render your fancy 3D elements is simply wasted time. I don't need my Word document or Outlook task to be 6-axis rotatable - I need it to pop up, show me what I need to see, and get out of my way fast when I'm done with it. All the "pretty" nonsense is a huge turnoff for OSX and it'll be a bigger turnoff when it's in an operating system that I'll actually have to use.
Locks: Whatever. I'm 100% secure on my XP Pro system, even running as admin (which I will admit I'd rather not have to do, except it is much more convenient). Every XP system ever can be made equally secure for free; MS could even make it easy by releasing a patch to make the config changes necessary. If ever I got too worried about something nasty making its way across the Internet, I can lock everything down and pop open a VMWare machine. Granted, the free machines are Linux and therefore a relatively large pain to configure, but less so than learning a whole new OS for everything as opposed to just learning how to set up a browser and firewall.
Lacks: Sounds like they missed out on doing things that tech writers would love but people who care only about productivity aren't interested in. The "gadgets" or "widgets" don't work right? Whatever. Waste of time and space in OSX, and I'm sure I'd get rid of them as soon as I could in Vista too. Slide shows don't have music? Well, that's certainly going to kill my productivity. </sarc> Who even cares about Wordpad? The whole planet already has Office. And there are even free alternatives for it. Oddly, the article fails to mention WinFS, which was the one legitimate performance-enhancing addition to Vista that intrigued me and yet got left on the cutting room floor.
Overall, it sounds like they tried to "Mac-ize" Windows, rather than improve the areas in which Windows is strong and leave (as another poster put it) the "Starbucks triple-hoity latte" features to the alternative OSs. For my company, I'll just be buying a couple extra XP licenses over the holidays to ride that out as long as I can.
I take it you didn't read the recent articles about gross inefficiencies in their development process.
Good for you using the latest and greatest though. You're now not completely in the dust compared to OS X, but prepare to fall much further behind in a few months.
It's out, but I haven't had time to play with it yet, so I have no opinion.
New systems will start coming with Vista and I'm starting to dig it. I will be buying it come January 30th.
This isn't a problem with the idea, but a problem with Microsoft's implementation. The gee-whiz eye candy on OS X is rendered by even the embedded Intel 950 graphics chipset that ships with the low-end Macs.
Whatever. I'm 100% secure on my XP Pro system, even running as admin (which I will admit I'd rather not have to do, except it is much more convenient)
Again, a Microsoft problem. Unix (of which OS X is a variant) lets you do pretty much everything you need without having root ("Administrator" in Windows).
The "Taller than Mickey Rooney Award"? You can be very short and still win.
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