Thread: Windows Vista

"They know that XP works," Bhavnani said. "It's not that they don't want to upgrade to Vista. They just don't want to upgrade to Vista yet."[/b]

I think that's correct. I think the sudden change to suddenly make everything switch to Vista might've been just a little too soon.

I'm not touching Vista till its been out for AT LEAST a year...

Yes, perfect argument. You totally convinced me why exactly. Keep up the good work!

Because he's a slave to symantec

Join the Microsoft crowd, we have cookies!

My hubby just built me a new PC with Vista, and I must say, I like it! It's so pretty

Yeah Vista is good. Unless you have a really OLD PC the transition should be smooth to upgrade!

My opinion is still overall negative. It uses a lot of resources but doesn't do a whole lot that could be considered "groundbreaking". And I still think Aero is bunk. Beryl is just as "shiny" (and, at times, just as pointless), and can run on a five year old PC without problems--INCLUDING full transparency.

Vista has failed
there's no two ways about it

It's come at the wrong time,
Offering the wrong features,
And going in the wrong direction

It started even before most people had heard of Longhorn / Vista
A lot of the new technology that would have set Vista apart from XP was dropped. Of the features that did stay, most were gimmicky and people know it
I've gone over these features before, so I won't repeat myself

Rightly or wrongly, people view Vista as the pinnacle of in-built DRM content control and (possible) limitation & refusal

Say "DRM" to the guy in the street, and he'll moan about CD's authored by Sony, his 2-year-old "HD Ready" TV, and MS Vista
(I'll come back to TV's in a sec)

At a time when both Apple & EMI records have ditched DRM from their offerings, and the comical situation HD-DVD & Blu-Ray are in at the moment
No-one wants DRM

What's more, is the market today
computers have traditionally had a nice, steady, predictable price
£500 for a basic office workstation
£800-1000 for a full on gaming rig
etc.

But over the last 5 years or so, these prices have dropped like a stone
My machine at work cost my boss £300, inc. 17" flat panel
It's hardly anything to write home about, but it works fine

People have gotten used to these "low, low prices" and people need a lot of convincing to spend more

When Vista was announced, but not yet released
retailers were encouraged to slap "Vista Ready", or "Vista Capable" stickers over their existing XP stock, and some of the larger retailers had vouchers with every machine for a free upgrade to Vista when it was released
(I have 4 vouchers in my drawer right now)

The issue was, that these machines were far from "Vista Capable"
at least not the Vista people had seen on the adverts
No 3D flipping or glassy windows on that machine, no sir-ee

The exact same thing had happened two years ago with "HD Ready" TV's that really weren't ready (and you know what, that was publicised far more and affected far more people than any OS could)

All it needed was a couple of stories & bad reviews, and people now equate "Vista Ready" machines with the same distrust in marketing as the HD-TV's of yester-year

Onto more current issues,
Anyone who follows the IT trade news will know that even those features that made it into Vista are now under threat
What with Google forcing MS to completely re-work the Desktop Search app

Not to mention the horde of cross-patent agreements MS are signing with Linux vendors at the moment
(A very strong indication that MS is going to venture into the *nix area in the future - or at least give a future windows incarnation a *nix backbone, a la OS X)

Nope, Vista is going into the failure bin
along with DOS 4.01, MS-Bob, Windows 98 First Edition & Windows ME

Will it make any difference
probably not

Originally Posted by Ynot

Say "DRM" to the guy in the street, and he'll moan about CD's authored by Sony, his 2-year-old "HD Ready" TV, and MS Vista

Actually, say "DRM" to the guy in the street and he won't say anything. Tech stuff like this generally doesn't make it out to the public, but instead stays where it originated - on the internet. I'm not sure how the situation is in the UK, but everyone that I've talked to about DRM knows very little, if anything. Say "DRM" at a tech convention, sure, you'll get some moaning, but anywhere else people will just be like "wtf you tokin about".

Another thing I don't get is how grossly overhyped the Vista DRM has been - In the months that I've been using Vista, not once has it had any problems playing any music I threw at it whatsoever (compared to linux and it's drivers, oh the drivers). Right now I currently have my entire (90% pirated) music collection shared across the network to my Vista computer using Windows Media Player 11. The DRM just isn't there as long as you avoid buying defective products like Blu-Ray/HD-DVD and Songs from napster and whatnot. Vista simply behaves better with DRMed material than previous OSes, under obligation of the music industry.

Sites like badvista are just comical, however, don't they know anything about marketing? It's even worse than that one joke of a Linux commercial that Red Hat made, it only appeals to the people who already agree. Somebody having no previous knowledge of Linux, viewing the commercial, frowns at it's hostility and moves on. If I cared, I'd make a better one.

God today's been a shitty day

People have gotten used to these "low, low prices" and people need a lot of convincing to spend more.

I wouldn't call today's gamings computers cheap. You put together a Core2Duo+Mobo and a 8800GTS and you are already at about $600 not including the monitor, speakers, RAM, hard drive, and etc.

It's just that the hardware side of things has gotten so far ahead of the software side things, cheap machines that cost $400-$500 total are capable of running a lot of today's applications and games at a perfectly acceptable speed.

I don't think Vista will fail... Remember how terrible XP was when it was first released? And now I love the OS - I never have any issues with it. But with that being said, maybe next year when Vista matures, and actually has a reason to upgrade (like DirectX10 gaming for example).

Gaming machines have never been cheap, for obvious reasons
but, the fact you think $600 (about £350) for a dual core processor and top-end graphics card is expensive, merely underlines my point