[KStrawn]

I have a screenshot of Windows Powershell in Windows 7 here

[KStrawn]

Just to say, there are interpreted OSs out there such as Pycorn, and if Microsoft were to use Powershell to write a version of Windows, in addition to a port of the interpreter BEING a Powershell script, it will enable Microsoft to do such things as create Filesystems in Powershell, as well as enable the ability for programs to take up no more than one script.

[WinTard]

Interesting concept?

Here's a snapshot of Windows PowerShell under Windows XP-SP3 x86.

Quote

The power-shell I use since day-one is TakeCommand. Alas it isn't free, but well worth the fee... It has its roots in the ZCPR (Zilog Console Processor Replacement) in CP/M. Predates DOS, and is IMHO one of the most powerful command line interpreters around.

- Provides a Real Windows Scripting Language
- 164 Built-in Commands (111 in LE)
- 245 Functions (140 in LE)
- 159 System Variables (97 in LE)
- Mature well tested code
- Upwardly compatible with CMD.EXE with literally thousands of additions
- Works Well With Others
- Fast - 20-200% faster output display than the standard Windows console
- Access FTP servers as local directories
- Use aliasing to customize the language
- Integrate PERL, Ruby, REXX, Python, and any Active Scripting language (including VBScript and Javascript)
- Available in English, French and German

Now back to topic: What's Worse: Windows Vista or Windows Me?

That article title sucks! And is obviously the work of some anti-Microsoft basher...

What's better is the latest Windows period! Today, it means Windows 7 Ultimate x64! Period!
Message was edited by: smax013 - fixed image size.

[KStrawn]

Windows Powershell contains many advantages over the C-prompt, and if Microsoft were to create a version of Windows that would simply interpret itself using a Powershell script designed to look like the real thing, integrating Powershell into the core Windows framework (like BASH), it would greatly improve the compatibility of Windows to programs, as well as improve performance if they actually enable Windows to interpret itself. It would, first of all, ease the work for programmers by only requiring one script instead of thousands, if not tens of thousands, of DLLs and executables. Second, it would take up less space on both the HDD and memory, since it would be consisting of one-script programs and features. And something that requires less RAM also requires less CPU, right?

[WinTard]

Cool thinking, something I had not considered. I shall definitely investigate the novel idea you are proposing. Thank you for expanding my horizons... :)

I like four letter words, such as cool, food and beer... Fast, perl, ruby, rexx are also good...

I eat fear for breakfast.

~~~~~~~~~~
The most debilitating emotion known to mankind is fear
What is F.E.A.R. False Evidence Appearing Real!
http://www.firewalki.../selfgrowth.jsp

[KStrawn]

I was just suggesting that if Microsoft actually did those things, it would really help them.

[WinTard]

I doubt Microsoft is going to deviate from Windows the way it is. I personally think Windows is great. It has brought us (I mean all of us) a common platform, ecosystem, upon which the likes of Open-Source couldn't exist but for Microsoft's contributions. With 'officially' 89% of the market share in terms of OS out there, not counting all the counterfeit, pirate, and other illicit copies of Windows... Also, it is by far the most flexible platform in existence, supporting a multitude of hardware; no other OS comes close to. Don't get me wrong, the 1% Linux market share is nothing to sneer at. But for most users, and businesses, thus ISV's Windows is not only adequate, but most don't even understand how to use it properly, or fully... Sure nothing is perfect, not Windows, and neither is Linux or OS X or whatever. Let's face it, without the gravitational pull of Windows and Microsoft, the Industry Standard x 86 platforms wouldn't exist, and we would all be running into different directions, spinning wheels, yet making no progress. Which BTW was the situation, before Microsoft... Incompatible OS. Incompatible applications. Incompatible hardware implementations. Incompatible add-on cards. Incompatible drivers. Incompatible everything. Succinctly, mass confusion.

Just look at the mess of Linux:
http://www.freeos.com/
http://www.livecdlist.com/
http://www.thefreeco...ems/index.shtml
Hundreds of variations of basically similar things, yet incompatible at the system libraries levels?

Please don?t get me wrong, I am an open-source, GNU, and Linux aficionado as well?

[KStrawn]

What I was suspecting Microsoft do is not make Windows more UNIX-like, but instead do something with their own software to create an OS, for instance, creating a version of Windows written with Powershell instead of C, or possibly creating a "Windows Live Kernel" serving as a basic platform for Live Essentials to run off of. If Microsoft made Windows either easier to program for or more customizable, they would be better off. It would mean a win-win situation if, especially, they actually created a basic kernel whose only features would be Live Essentials (plus making all the existing Windows features Live Essentials).

[mjd420nova]

I think that the difference between WINME and Vista is like comparing a steam locomotive to a deisel electric locomotive. Each represents a certain level of advancement of technology and was written to take advantage of some of those without a complete revamping of the entire OS. WinME fit a certain advancement of the market that was beginning to broaden in its video and audio recording and editing abilities and M$ needed to make an attempt to add this to their platform with some continuity from the previous OS. Vista is a bigger attempt to take in a huge advance from a single core hyper thread processor to a multicore market. Unfortunately the OS did not provide enough of an upwardly compatible platform to allow users to make the jump with just the software alone. This was evident when users lost the use of drives and printers that were functioning well under the XP platform. Failure to provide compatible drivers or allow the previous drivers to continue under Vista has driven many users to roll back to the previous XP platform that they knew worked well. This failure to allow a roll back also drove many to added frustration and eventual bashing of M$ for not being more thoughtful or concerned.

[KStrawn]

Aside from this subject, I have noticed patterns in the Windows 7 release schedule: The Beta was released during CES 2009. Afterward, the RC was released on a holiday: Cinco De Mayo, 2009. This makes a pattern that could point escrow builds of the final release to another holiday, perhaps July 4 or possibly Labor Day. Is it possible? You bet, and highly likely, too.

[WinTard]

What an interesting observation! I like the way you think sir!

~~~~~~~~~~
Energy follows thought. We can strive towards but never exceed what we can imagine and believe in.
~ Sci

[Boomshadow]

Now this, I actually agree with, although despite my dislike of Vista's interface, I'm willing to bet that bringing it under POSIX compliance may be easier than with ME. Never tried either.

One element of assessment I have not yet seen here is judging the two products by what they replaced. ME replaced 98, which, while not perfect, was perhaps the best iteration of 16/32-bit Win9x in terms of stability and compatibility. That said, I crashed it daily. ;)

Vista replaced Windows XP, which only took people about a year to get used to, and has matured into a reasonably stable OS at each of the 32 and 64-bit levels. Without dragging other OSes into the discussion, since that seems to be a sore point here on PCWorld, consensus seems to be that XP was the best Windows during its time, even with ongoing security issues.

Vista seems to me to be somewhat more secure than XP, but requires a good deal more horsepower to run and has an interface that...well, either you like a Picasso or you don't. It's built on a completely new kernel.

ME, however, did not add much, if anything, to the 9x kernel except security and stability issues.

As such, I conclude for my experience that ME was worse than Vista--or to appease those who don't like the topic title, Vista is better than ME.

Marginally.

[WinTard]

Hey, we're getting to know each other... I agree with what you say. However in my experience I found most root causes to systems crashing can be traced back to faulty device drivers running at at kernel levels and / or faulty (flaky) hardware. Memory leaks are atrocious, unless properly handled by the OS. Even then, they can't be mitigated, as an errant behavior in any program that crashes, but has allocated memory and file handles, doesn't clean-up properly after themselves, but what's any OS to do? Once resources have been allocated to a task, if the task doesn't release the resource when it faults, then eventually a system crash results... Under ANY OS. Unix included. When I say Unix, I also mean Linux/BSD/OS X.

~~~~~~~~~
I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
~ Stephen Hawking

[rgreen4]

While I used Win98 back in the day, I sometimes managed to crash it several times a day - and that was at home not at work. Work was even worse. We knew to save everything on a regular basis, and even that had problem. When opening a spreadsheet, and doing a what if, not intending to save it, and out of habit, you would reach up and click on the save button, and then curse under your breath, while you restore the original values.

Window Me was a botch job rushed to market for only one reason, they did not want users of 98 to try to upgrade to Windows 2000 only based on the version name. Had they called Windows 2000 Professional NT5, which it really is, they would not have had any confusion. Of course they did put the work Professional on it, but then everyone was asking where the consumer version was. Windows 2000 Pro was released in February, 2000, but Me was not released until 7 months later. Slightly more than a year after that, it was of course replace by XP Home.

While I never used Me, and didn't use XP until early 2004, I did use Win2K at work starting in 2001. From what I have heard, and the fact that it was off the shelves in 1 year, nothing could be worse than Windows Me.

Full disclosure - I like Vista HP and have in on three machines, but I like Windows 7 RC even more.

[mpheadley]

For me Windows ME would CONSISTENTLY and RELIABLY fail to shut down properly. I'd wait and wait for the windows ME logo to disappear. It wouldn't. So I'd shut it down before I was supposed to and wham! Instant corrupted bootup files! Eventually I gave up and reverted back to Windows 98 and no problems.

[WinTard]

For some unknown reasons, an Asus W5F ultra-portable from a friend got into all sorts of troubles... It was running XP-SP2. Long story short, I was unable to unlock the admin account, even with Winternal's Locksmith. So I try to repair it with XP-SP3, and it would just hang. The only option was to wipe off the machine, and do a bare-metal install. Oh well, before going there, I simply attempted Windows 7 x86 RC (build 7201), and problem fixed! It installed everything in under 30 minutes, renamed the existing corrupted XP old.windows, kept all the data intact. Upon loading Avast (free edition), it found a bunch of viruses, which it blew away.

Now that system works (seriously, no kidding) twice as fast XP-SP2, even with all application programs loaded. IE8 is virtually instantaneous on most webpages. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work flawlessly.

Full Disclosure: For me, looking forward, there are only two version of Windows: Windows 7 Ultimate, and Server 2008 Enterprise. That's it and that's all. The rest was fun and profitable, but now is the time to move on with the time. And I'm only going 64-bit forward. No more 32-bit, thank you.

~~~~~~~~~~
Leave yesterday alone. Tomorrow's what matters.
~ Jonathan Cainer

Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
~ Napoleon Hill, 1883-1970, American Speaker/Motivational Writer/Author of "Think and Grow Rich"

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
~ Ambrose Bierce, 1842-1914, American Author/Editor/Journalist

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
~ Henry Ford, 1863-1947, American Industrialist and Founder of Ford Motor Company

Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
~ Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519, Italian Painter and Sculptor

[WinTard]

Sincerely, have you tried Windows 7? It is better than Windows 98 for sure. Even on the same hardware! Since it will load onto a system with only 96MB RAM, why not give it a try? You have everything to gain, and nothing to lose. It is free to evaluate until June 30 2010.

~~~~~~~~~
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.
~ Frank Crane

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
~ Galileo Galilei

[Jesant13]

I can confirm this - I used to own a PC running Windows Me, & man, was it buggy. It is the worst operating system I've ever used.

Windows Vista is much better than Windows Me, if anybody says otherwise they are kidding themselves.

[MacSmiley]

dfschmid, on 19 May 2009 - 05:48 PM, said:

I'm not blowing some 3K for a Mac during a recession just because it looks nicer.

I know I'm late to the party here, guys, but I can't help but be amazed at the myths still flying around about the expense of a Mac. The least expensive Mac mini is $599. MacBooks start at $999, MacBook Pros & the new iMacs start at $1199. The only $3000 Mac is the top of the line Mac Pro workstation which is overkill for the average consumer.

Go get yourself updated, at least, at

http://store.apple.com/us

or check out Apple's Special Deals:

http://store.apple.c...me/specialdeals