Posted on 03/09/2008 5:23:13 PM PDT by Obi-Wandreas
"They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know.
By RANDALL STROSS ONE year after the birth of Windows Vista, why do so many Windows XP users still decline to “upgrade”?
Microsoft says high prices have been the deterrent. Last month, the company trimmed prices on retail packages of Vista, trying to entice consumers to overcome their reluctance. In the United States, an XP user can now buy Vista Home Premium for $129.95, instead of $159.95.
An alternative theory, however, is that Vista’s reputation precedes it. XP users have heard too many chilling stories from relatives and friends about Vista upgrades that have gone badly. The graphics chip that couldn’t handle Vista’s whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista.
Can someone tell me again, why is switching XP for Vista an “upgrade”?"
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Depends on race and gender.
Win2K
The big question should be: What changes would you want to make the next OS better?
From my point of view, MS makes an error trying to make an OS that will be all things to all people. Instead they should create an online AI that will query customers until they get the *optimum* system for their computer, peripherals and software.
Doing things this way would make MS a hardware and software clearinghouse for manufacturers. Ideally, set up as a neutral third party.
It would take several hours to properly set up your system, but once done, you would be fairly certain that everything was optimized to work together. Then, with each new piece of hardware or software added to the mix, the AI would again optimize your system performance with file additions and replacements.
It could even have an “upgrade suggestion mode”, that could, for example, say everything from “you might want to upgrade your video card if you want to play this game”, or “performance is slow because you need more RAM”, to “It has been 389 days since you last took in your printer for services.”
Adjustments could be made for old software and network interoperability.
And DRM should be made optional. If I pay for software, I want full functionality. I don’t want to pay to be told I can’t do something.
“I am SORRY that I got a DELL with Vista. I tried to write them a personal letter that came back! It is easier to crack the code to get into the computers at the PENTAGON than to be able to speak in ENGLISH to someone at Dell.”
Exact same experience here, but with XP. I finally gave up trying to work with Dell and took the brand new PC to a computer shop where they were able to get it working for me. Still having some minor problems, but they are easily handled for my purposes.
Sell your dell, run windows in parallels or bootcamp or both on your Mac. Save money and time and be worry free!
My Dad served as a quad 40 gunnery officer on the Iowa in Korea, might have known each other.
Oh yeah, on another subject, I do appreciate sarcasm too.
Forget the hard drive. I’m interested in that 512MB sound card :-)
He isn't in college, he's in the military at his first school. But I got some incredible advise from my fellow FReepers. openoffice.org has a word program for free.
Thank you for your reply Doohickey.
It was finished in November 2006. It was released immediately, and by January 30, 2007 everyone could get it. Vendors and developers have already had 1.25 years to "make it all work" and it still doesn't.
Are you saying that if we give it just one more year they'll get everything to work? Or are you forgetting that they had over a year already?
LOL...I made it before then, but...it sure does fit them, doesn’t it?
Oh well. Ya gotta laugh.
My dad passed on Dec 17, 2003. Dad's favorite "accomplishment" on the Iowa was wiping out the ammunition dump at Wonsan Harbor on September 23, 1952. Later, when the ship was conducting training, my dad's gun crew nailed a jeep at 30 miles with an inert round. It almost cost the "meatball" flag for battle efficiency as it was the base commander's vehicle. He never really expected the crew to score a direct hit.
I haven't read all the comments; I am amazed.
Vista was written for the benefit of protected content providers. Yes, the computing power has increased significantly, but it is all totally wasted (literally) making sure that pirates and other losers don't use it to steal content. Does it take a lot of smarts to figure out that most people who BUY the software aren't crooks and resent having awesome power but are utterly unable actually to use it?
If they had released software that actually was competent enough to know when "protected content" was being accessed and not have to check constantly we might actually enjoy the benefit from the increased computing power. Am I pissed? Well, yeah. I would love to be able to run basic programs with modern computer power, but that's no longer an option. The toy boys drive the level of performance for everyone now.
What do I plan to do? Forget about VISTA forever and switch to Linux, if XP ever stops being supported.
I'm hoping that Europe's total defeat of Microsoft's arrogant marketing will benefit all of us in the future.
No one deserves it better than Microsoft.
Use Open Office. It is free and is compatible with MS Office.
“Come to think of it, the only computer that challenges me is my daughter’s iBook (req’d for school) It won’t work with anything.”
Thank you. I have been trying to tell people on this site for along time that Macs do not work well with others, but all they do is try to blow happy dust up my butt, while extolling the wonderfulness of the new computing paradigm. I bought an iMac for my wife and we both hate it. It didn’t allow full functionality with our 2 year old printer, won’t work with our desktop speaker system, doesn’t handle MSWord very well nor does it work with any of the music services. I just recently loaded Vista on it and now we boot in Vista for everything except her photo work and everything is finally right with the world again.
Whats changed is that the OGL ICDs will be one layer further
from the HW than before thanks to new HW abstraction layer
driver model for Vista.
If you’re going to be critical of Microsoft, fine. But get the facts straight.
Gates didn’t drop out of high school. He did drop out of Harvard. The circumstances leading to his dropping out are pretty fascinating…
In December of 1974, Allen was on his way to visit Gates when along the way he stopped to browse the current magazines. What he saw changed his and Bill Gates's lives forever. On the cover of Popular Electronics was a picture of the Altair 8080 and the headline "World's First Microcomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models." He bought the issue and rushed over to Gates's dorm room. They both recognized this as their big opportunity. The two knew that the home computer market was about to explode and that someone would need to make software for the new machines. Within a few days, Gates had called MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), the makers of the Altair. He told the company that he and Allen had developed a BASIC that could be used on the Altair [Teamgates.com, 9/29/96]. This was a lie. They had not even written a line of code. They had neither an Altair nor the chip that ran the computer. The MITS company did not know this and was very interested in seeing their BASIC. So, Gates and Allen began working feverishly on the BASIC they had promised. The code for the program was left mostly up to Bill Gates while Paul Allen began working on a way to simulate the Altair with the schools PDP-10. Eight weeks later, the two felt their program was ready. Allen was to fly to MITS and show off their creation. The day after Allen arrived at MITS, it was time to test their BASIC. Entering the program into the company's Altair was the first time Allen had ever touched one. If the Altair simulation he designed or any of Gates's code was faulty, the demonstration would most likely have ended in failure. This was not the case, and the program worked perfectly the first time [Wallace, 1992, p. 80]. MITS arranged a deal with Gates and Allen to buy the rights to their BASIC.[Teamgates.com, 9/29/96] Gates was convinced that the software market had been born. Within a year, Bill Gates had dropped out of Harvard and Microsoft was formed. Source
This took some serious moxie and ability from a 19 year old kid. Don’t think Gates and Allen lacked talent.
Because of their success, IBM came knocking on Gates’ door. Gates wanted to sell BASIC to IBM on a ROM chip, but first IBM needed an operating system. Gates sent IBM to Gary Kildall, calling Gary with an IBM rep in his office and giving Gary a heads up. This comes straight from Tom Rolander, who worked with Kildall, was present throughout these events, and was Kildall’s best friend.
IBM wanted a flat license fee and wanted to change the name of the OS from CP/M to PC-DOS. Kildall refused, so IBM returned to Gates. What follows is fascinating. Gates had no idea how he was going to provide IBM an operating system, but commits and finds a way to deliver six weeks later...
He had given Gary Kildall first shot. He wasn't going to give him a second. Kildall was a better programmer. Gates was a better businessman and saw the opportunity a lot clearer than Gary Kildall did.
Bill Gates greatest skill is to give people what they want. Bill Gates didn't have an operating system to sell but told IBM he did. Paul Allen, Microsoft's co-founder knew of where he could get an operating system just across town.
Tim Paterson owner of Seattle Computer Products had written Q-DOS a close imitation of CP/M. Allen bought it from him for $50,000. He never mentioned that he was going to resell it to IBM.
Microsoft renamed it MS-DOS, then a made a deal with IBM. IBM would pay them royalties for each copy and Microsoft would retain the ownership rights to the operating system. This meant they could license MS-DOS to anyone they wanted.
IBM PCs became the industry standard. But, they priced their machines too high which opened the door for IBM compatible computers or clones and Microsoft sold the operating system to every single one of them.
Gary Kildall was not happy when he found out about the Microsoft-IBM deal. He considered it theft when he learned how similar MS-DOS was to CP/M. He was too easy going to sue and even if he did, copyright laws would have made it hard for him to win. A copyright only protects you from an outright copy, not an imitation.
The threat of litigation caused IBM to give Kildall a deal. IBM would offer CP/M as an option along with MS-DOS. That was fine with him. He believed the PC industry had room for two operating systems. Competition was good, he thought. Just like there was room for two colas and three automakers.
IBM never told him they would let customers choose between MS-DOS at $40 and CP/M at $240. Of course, who would pay 6 times more for the same thing? Source
Rod Brock was the owner of Seattle Computer, a hardware manufacturer. Tim Paterson was Brock’s employee. Brock sold non-exclusive rights for Q-DOS to Paul Allen and eventually sold the code outright for $50,000 (Source), not “a couple of grand.” It only took Paterson eight weeks to create Q-DOS, referencing a CP/M manual. In today’s dollars, that’s over $140K for eight weeks work (Source). This was a good deal for Seattle Computer, which didn’t want to be in software, but hardware. .Paterson joined Microsoft’s team a year later (Source). Gates didn’t buy “MS DOS from a brilliant programmer in his garage who was too stupid to know what he had for a couple of grand.”
The real coup made by Gates was getting IBM to allow him to sell the OS to others. Credit Gates with luck or vision, he was willing to pass on more money today for a big potential future payout…
In what would become a typical move for the company, Gates and Balmer bought an OS for $50,000, which they in turn licensed to IBM for $80,000. Even in the early 1980s, $80,000 wasn't very much money. So what was Gates thinking? It turns out that he was thinking far ahead. He said as much when interviewed for the PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds": "the key to our...deal was that IBM had no control over...our licensing to other people."
Microsoft realized that the IBM PC was going to create a mass market for personal computers. Gates gambled that the business cycle would follow the mainframe model and spawn clones. Out of necessity, these clones would be obliged to pay Microsoft any price to use DOS, which meant that the company was the gatekeeper that PC makers had to pay to compete in the personal computing world.
It worked. Source
Criticize Vista (I know I do). Criticize Microsoft. But do it from a position of knowledge and accuracy, not ignorance and falsehoods.
And credit Gates with a technical business brilliance that ranks him along side, if not superior to the likes of Edison, Ford, and Rockefeller.
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