[Evildave]

If Vista is so wonderful, why in heaven's name have three boot modes? You should just launch Vista and live in perfect bliss knowing that everything you have works perfectly with it.

You might actually want to READ what the lawsuit is about. Just more predatory and misleading marketing on Microsoft's part is all.
http://seattlepi.nws...msftsued03.html

Savvy as some people are on this forum, most users buy a PC and assume it'll just work out of the box, and believe what the sticker on it says. They get a new PC, it runs like a snail crawling over rock salt, lots of their applications don't work, and then they should blame the MANUFACTURER.

I still do mainly blame DELL most of all for putting Vista on my notebook without checking to see if the OS wasn't a P.O.S., which it WAS.

As for your FUD attack on OpenOffice, get real. Every new version of Microsoft Office changes the file format and leaves people with previous versions of Microsoft Office in EXACTLY the same boat as OpenOffice users. Whatever gets sent to you with Office 200x won't open, because the latest 'M$ Office' ALWAYS saves in the incompatible new format unless you install an 'update' or find a setting to 'export' it, which is nearly impossible to tell some bimbo with white-out on her screen how to do over the phone. I weep no tears for clueless schmucks who surf the upgrade wave and never get off no matter how many rocks they hit. Microsoft even eventually 'adopted' the OpenDocument standard, except (as usual with standards that Microsoft coopts) they made THEIR version of OpenDocument DIFFERENT.

As for why I'm 'so pissed off' at Vista, I programmed under DOS and various flavors of Windows for 18 years. Of ALL of those 'painful' upgrades, Vista was the straw that broke the camel's back. I see where Microsoft's operating systems are going, and I don't want to be a part of that plane wreck.

No more Microsoft crapware for me, thank you very much. I'll just run those Windoze apps that I'm stuck with in a VMware and give the makers grief for not providing Linux support for their products. It's nice that Adobe's Flex SDK runs just fine in Linux, and sad that so many of their other nice products don't have a Linux version, even though it should be a 'no-brainer' as the latter day macs are mostly POSIX based, and they provide Mac support for just about everything.

As for the 'messy' upgrade path to Linux, I think a nice parable about how fish that live in polluted water will die if you put them in clean water sort of illustrates the problem.

If you buy a PC with Linux on it, it will run just as well as a new Windows machine (far better if that machine has Vista on it), and 100% of the devices installed will be compatible. They configured it to run Linux, so it runs Linux. You can't blame Linux when manufacturers make hardware without Linux drivers, any more than you can complain because most Windows hardware won't work in a Macintosh, and many pieces of hardware made for the Macintosh won't plug into a PC clone, either.

If you want to be able to serve web pages to a billion people and embed computers into microchips, develop software that will stand the test of time, go POSIX. (Unix, Linux, even Macintosh).

If you wanna play video games and pirate software from your employer, buy Windows (or even better, buy a CONSOLE and don't worry about 'compatibility' lists).

If you want an 'Awesome Gaming PC' for about $500, you can't go far wrong buying a PS3 and installing one of the various supported flavors of Linux on the hard drive. You'll be able to play games AND do computing on the same machine, if that's what turns your crank. Sony COOPERATES with this, providing a runtime environment that supports it, unlike Microsoft and their XBOX machines. You can even setup an emulator to run a Windows session in a box if you 'have to' taint your machine with some Windows garbage.

[wildhawk]

CTKen, you must have been sitting at my desk with my equipment, because my experience with Vista, new laptop preinstalled with Vista and new multiuse printer for Vista mirrors my experience EXACTLY! I HATE MICROSOFT!!!

[rgreen4]

I will answer your question about the triple boot, but ignore the rest of the rambling repetitive post, most of which you have stated several times before in other discussions.

I do not use the XP boot or the Windows 2000 boot for my use. I use them (on separate drives) to conduct experiments (what some other members have referred to as intellectual intrigue) when some one wonders if something is possible in XP. This machine was a dual boot (Vista and XP) until someone posted a problem installing a printer on a Windows 2000 machine and printing to it over a network from a Vista laptop.

I realized I had an old parallel port printer, a legal copy of Windows 2000, a home network, and a laptop with Vista. After sucessfully installing W2K on the PC, connecting it to the network and having W2K automatically recognizing and installing the printer, I posted my experience and results to assist the member with the question. I simply left W2K installed on the third drive in the PC.

Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but I always look for ways to make things work, and like to spend my time assisting others, not tearing down.

[cfischer83]

You've got to be kidding me! You're bringing up issues from the first month Vista was released and then you make a bogus claim about Aero looking like Aqua? (which I don't know how it fits into the story at all). First of all, Aqua has a brushed metal interface which was inspired by Windows 9x metal look (although Aqua looks nicer than those) and Leopard's glassy looking interface is a total rip off of Vista's glassy interface which looks NOTHING like the brushed metal of the previous Aqua. How exactly does Aero resemble Aqua besides starting with the letter A? I use both Tiger and Vista and besides the 'shadows' behind open windows, there are no similarities.

Secondly, stop posting anti-Microsoft articles because it's the 'popular' thing to do, you sound like all the other zombie bloggers and it makes you look like you can't think for yourself.

[Evildave]

If that's what you're using them for, you should try 'VMware' or some other virtual machine software. It's a lot nicer to be able to boot the scratch OS in a window. Much easier than dropping everything and rebooting to see what a UI looked like in a ghost of OS past. Copying the virtual machine folders to make new virtual boxes to destroy is also a lot quicker than the typical drive image/restore.

There's a free version of VMware you can use, though I believe it is sans networking. Not generally a problem since older guest Windows OSs that will become DDNS and spam bots if someone sends the right packet to it.
http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

There are a few other virtual machine packages out there with various kinds of free and pay licensing, too.
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Comparisonofvirtual_machines

There's even a Microsoft solution to do it, though it doubtless makes the wobbliest versions of Bochs look just 'awesome'. If you gotta tow that Microsoft party line all the way, then you should ignore the 50 or so other virtualization products and latch onto that.
http://www.microsoft...pc/default.mspx

I'm sure it'd be 'special' to run a Vista virtual machine under Vista and have them both decide they should 'optimize' the drive and reindex everything at the same time.

You could even run a version of Linux or two.

Vista has no redeeming features. Just XP re-designed poorly by greedy, psychotic paranoids. Not that XP its self is all that great. It just took Vista to make it seem good by comparison.

Sure, ripping on Vista is like kicking a retard for fun, but there's no sense taking every word spoken against Microsoft personally. I doubt even Bill Gates would get so agitated.

[RastaMon]

Quote

Every new version of Microsoft Office changes the file format and leaves people with previous versions of Microsoft Office in EXACTLY the same boat as OpenOffice users. Whatever gets sent to you with Office 200x won't open, because the latest 'M$ Office' ALWAYS saves in the incompatible new format unless you install an 'update' or find a setting to 'export' it, which is nearly impossible to tell some bimbo with white-out on her screen how to do over the phone. I weep no tears for clueless schmucks who surf the upgrade wave and never get off no matter how many rocks they hit. Microsoft even eventually 'adopted' the OpenDocument standard, except (as usual with standards that Microsoft coopts) they made THEIR version of OpenDocument DIFFERENT.

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If you buy a PC with Linux on it, it will run just as well as a new Windows machine (far better if that machine has Vista on it), and 100% of the devices installed will be compatible.

Quote

If you want to be able to serve web pages to a billion people and embed computers into microchips, develop software that will stand the test of time, go POSIX. (UNIX?, Linux, even Macintosh).

Quoted for truth.

Quote

No more Microsoft crapware for me, thank you very much.

I upgraded to iWork '08 last week. It cost me a whopping $39 for my education license. (I could have gotten a license for five machines for only $99.) I subsequently trashed Office 2004, and no longer have any MS software on my machine. I think it's funny how Apple's TextEdit and iWork are more compatible with Office 2007 than Office 2004 was!

[rgreen4]

RastaMon said:

> Every new version of Microsoft Office changes the file format and leaves people with previous versions of Microsoft Office in EXACTLY the same boat as OpenOffice users. Whatever gets sent to you with Office 200x won't open, because the latest 'M$ Office' ALWAYS saves in the incompatible new format unless you install an 'update' or find a setting to 'export' it, which is nearly impossible to tell some bimbo with white-out on her screen how to do over the phone. I weep no tears for clueless schmucks who surf the upgrade wave and never get off no matter how many rocks they hit. Microsoft even eventually 'adopted' the OpenDocument standard, except (as usual with standards that Microsoft coopts) they made THEIR version of OpenDocument DIFFERENT.

While I cannot speak of the validity of this on a Mac, it is absolutely FALSE in the Windows world. Office '97, Office 2000 and Office 2003 had the same file formats. A document created in Word 2003 could be opened in Word '97 or Word 2000 WITHOUT ANY addins. The same for Excell. I work in an office with a mix of Office 2000 and 2003 installations and we send files back and forth to Corporate without any problems and they have a mix as well. I personally have exchanged Office 2000 files with a volunteer organization that until recently had Office 2003 on all their machines. They now have Office 2007.

Office 2007 can be set rather easily to use the '97 file format as the default. No add-ins needed. Office 2003 can download an update that will allow it to open and save Office 2007 files.

RastaMon said:

> If you buy a PC with Linux on it, it will run just as well as a new Windows machine (far better if that machine has Vista on it), and 100% of the devices installed will be compatible.

Well if you buy a new machine with Linux it should run like a new machine!


Of course if you install Linux on an older machine, it may install fine, but trying to network work it with certain wireless devices is an exercise in futility. Just check their forums. I even tried it on a desktop with ethernet and while it would at least see the internet, it would not see my NAS volumes. The list of devices without Linux drivers is a lot longer than the list of devices without Vista drivers. While my notebook that wouldn't connect to the router with Linux connected just fine with Vista, Vista even ran in 1GB of memory, I was stuck with the defauld 800x600 resolution as there are not ATI 9000/9100 drivers available and won't be. But, I blame ATI for that not Microsoft. I found the glorious promise of Linux to be empty rhetoric. I do not plan to try again, I will instead spend my time on Vista which works fine for me, does everything I want, efficiently and easily.

I spend about 95% of my time on Vista and about 4% on XP, generally only when I need to answer an XP question or archieve e-mails on my old machine that is still XP. The other 1% is W2K to answer any questions about it.

[RastaMon]

I guess I should feel flattered that you responded to the Evildave quotes in my post after you explicitly refused to respond to them when he posted them. Or perhaps I should feel insulted. I'm not really sure.

Quote

While I cannot speak of the validity of this on a Mac, it is absolutely FALSE in the Windows world. Office '97, Office 2000 and Office 2003 had the same file formats.

This is incorrect. Microsoft has made subtle and not so subtle changes to their file formats from one version of Office to the next. I'd offer links, but the abundance of pages referencing the compatibility packages necessary for compatibility of previous versions with Office 2007 have effectively "Google bombed" relevant pages out of my search results. I was, however, able to find one reference.

Quote

Well if you buy a new machine with Linux [sic] it should run like a new machine!

Yes, and it typically does. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of new Vista machines, which are often painfully slow, right out of the box. I had a Pentium (I) < 300 MHz running XP SP2 (not supported by MS) that performed tasks faster than a brand new Vista box. I had a friend install Vista Ultimate on his almost new high-end gaming laptop, and it slowed to a crawl, making my 3.5 year old G3 iBook look like a speed demon by comparison. In fact, I've never seen Vista run fast on anything. A new machine should not be slow.

Quote

Of course if you install Linux [sic] on an older machine, it may install fine, but trying to network work it with certain wireless devices is an exercise in futility. Just check their forums. I even tried it on a desktop with ethernet and while it would at least see the internet, it would not see my NAS volumes.

I've seen people install GNU/Linux on older machines without having any network issues. The NAS was fully visible. My guess is that you started with a Windows network, and tried to incorporate a GNU/Linux box. That's just asking for problems. Microsoft has gone out of their way over the years to make it difficult to implement non-Windows clients on Windows networks. It one of the ways they maintain their market monopoly without having to offer superior products, ensuring fixing the problem is more expensive than adding another Microsoft band-aid. Had you begun with an open standards based GNU/Linux (or Mac, *BSD, Solaris, etc.) network, you would have most likely been able to incorporate Windows machines without any major issues. There are good reasons why so few geeks choose Windows as their primary operating system.

Quote

The list of devices without Linux [sic] drivers is a lot longer than the list of devices without Vista drivers? I was stuck with the defauld 800x600 resolution as there are not ATI 9000/9100 drivers available and won't be. But, I blame ATI for that not Microsoft.

Forgive me for finding your inconsistencies here quite funny. It's not Microsoft's fault that there are many modern devices lacking Vista drivers, yet it is GNU/Linux's fault that there is a shortage of GNU/Linux drivers.

Do you know why there are fewer drivers for GNU/Linux? Have you read the GPL? To (over) simplify: if a manufacturer won't release an open driver, it can't be officially supported by GNU/Linux. What was Microsoft's excuse for breaking so many new drivers with each new Vista beta, again?

[jakthebomb]

i think it was a old version of aim that came preinstalled with my dell. the problem was the aim version was not compatible with the DWM that is used for the Aero interface.

and the imac is intel core 2 duo, 2gb ram. using boot camp Vista is faster than mac os 10.5.

just wate all of you will be saying the same thing about Windows 7,

the following list is how the newer version of windows was hated and how i compair them to today. for example when xp came out, xp was in the exact situation that vista is in right now. every one wanted to keep 98 instead of switching to xp. but in the future windows 7 will be next in line for the hatrid, and vista will be the "saving grace"

1999 "windows 98" = 2007 XP

2001 XP = 2007 Vista

2007 Vista = 2009 or 2010 "Windows 7"

jakthebomb

[rgreen4]

I will admit that I noticed the quotes in your post, and not the originals in Evildave's.
You claim incompatible formats, yet the fact remains that the company I work for has several thousand PC's running Windows. Currently 2000 with some XP and shortly Vista. In the past 10 years, there has been a mix of Office 97, 2000 and 2003 installed on these machines. Files have been passed back and forth without problem between the three versions of Office without any problems. All of the old Office 97 installations are gone, in favor of the greater functionality of 2000, and many now have 2003.
When Vista is rolled out, Office 2007 comes with it and the understanding that for a while the default may have be set to save in the '97-'03 format. I have been sent hundreds of Word documents and thousands of Excel files that I know were generated on Office 2003 in the corporate office and have never had a single one fail to open in Office 2000.
As to my supposed blaming Linux for the incompatability with the wireless on my laptop because of no driver, I made no such claim. I simply stated a fact. Many have posted inferences that if you install Linux, there will be great joy, the world will be well and you can do everything under Linux that you can do under Windows. I have not found that to be true. There are great incompatabilities with Linux, and you just confirmed that again in your Post. If there are no GNU drivers, then there are no drivers. I place no blame except with those who say Linux installs on anything and works will anything.
Talk about the dog wagging the tail. He who has 90% of the market is supposed to conform with a system that has less than 5%? I think not. Years ago a Burroughs (long out of business computer company) tried to convince me that the pin feed spacing on his machine was correct and that the paper that wouldn't feed was wrong. I pointed out to him that we run hundreds of boxes through our IBM printer without a problem, and that if anyone sets the standard it would be IBM, not Burroughs. Apparently I was right, for the last time I checked, IBM was still in the mainframe business. We even have two of their machines here. Pin-feed printers are almost all gone now, with just a few printing on specialty jobs that are about to shifted to Laser printers.
As to my network, yes it is windows based, having been set up with XP initially. It now has three Vista machines, (one with XP and 2000 as well) and two XP machines. I was not about to dump a network setup with decades of data running flawlessly on 5 machines, to attempt to reconfigure so one oddball OS could read the drives. I simple reformatted the Linux drive, later installed Win2K on the drive to answer a question for a forum member, and went on. I did find a use for the Linux CD however, I used it to boot test a new build that did not have a HD. As to the laptop that would not connect with Linux, it has a built in wireless adapter that has documented problems in Linux, so I simply re-installed the XP drive and went on, end of experiment.
All people changing from one OS to another have problems to one extent or another. Some have more problems that others for various reasons. What I find amazing is that anyone finds this fact newsworthy,

[douglas3839]

good for you.

What the problem is for many people is that Microsoft knowingly lowered required specifications so that Intel would not be left hanging with a bunch of crappy 915 integrated motherboards and also help Intel boost their quarterly earnings. Many people got screwed when they bought brand new computers labeled "Vista Capable" would not even run most of the new features Microsoft had been touting about.

http://gizmodo.com/3...-graphics-chips

The bad thing about it is that Microsoft knew.

Vista was supposed to feature a brand new file system. More secure. In my opinion, it is nothing more than another Windows Me.

I have xp pro and vista business on my 17" macbook pro . Using Parallels I run windows in a virtual environment right alongside OS X. I have 2 gig of ram, 2.4 intel core duo and geforce 8600m gt with 256 meg.

xp runs circles around vista. vista was and is nothing more but fluff. xp runs fine and actually faster that vista with sp1!



And btw, Leopard, with the latest updates, runs beautiful. Great spellcheck feature have to use both environments but now prefer Mac. No more issues. really.

[RastaMon]

Quote

You claim incompatible formats, yet the fact remains that the company I work for has several thousand PC's running Windows.

I've seen the compatibility issues first hand. I know they exist. It's how Microsoft keeps people buying their latest version of Office.

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Many have posted inferences that if you install Linux, there will be great joy, the world will be well and you can do everything under Linux that you can do under Windows.

I know of a lot more IT pros that are migrating their enterprise towards GNU/Linux than towards Windows. The market share for GNU/Linux is increasing. The market share for Macs is increasing. Do you know where that new market comes from? The most knowledgeable Windows tech I've met in over twenty-five years of using computers is in the process of eliminating Windows entirely from the entire company for whom he manages IT. GNU/Linux is his choice to expand functionality and keep costs low. And yes, anything he can do with Windows he can do with Gnu/Linux. Or Macs.

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As to the laptop that would not connect with Linux, it has a built in wireless adapter that has documented problems in Linux ?

So basically, your conclusions about Linux are based on an experiment that was set up for failure from the start. How objective of you.

Quote

Talk about the dog wagging the tail. He who has 90% of the market is supposed to conform with a system that has less than 5%?

Why should every other operating system conform to Windows' proprietary formats simply because Microsoft has long practiced illegal anti-competitive market practices? Networks work just fine long before Bill Gates arrived on the scene. I'm sure you've heard of UNIX? before, right? It's been around since about 1969, and the majority of operating systems in use are based on it or designed to work just like it. Those systems network together quite well, typically better than Windows networks. WinPCs can even be easily incorporated, because, unlike Microsoft, the open source community does not need to keep formats secretive to ensure the continued use of their systems.

Do you think it's a coincidence that Microsoft waited until Firefox captured more of the browser market than IE to decide that IE v.8 should comply with the W3C standards that Microsoft helped to write ? Safari official releases have passed Acid2 since October 2005, with Konqueror's official release following less than a month later. (I do have to correct my previous claims; official Firefox releases are still unable to pass Acid2, but public builds from as early as 2006 have been able to pass.) Both Apple and the GNU/Linux community beat Microsoft by over thirty months with their first Acid2 compliant builds. Do you think Microsoft failed to comply to the W3C standards on purpose, or did they simply lack the programming talent to write a compliant browser application? I seriously doubt it was the latter. Being non-compliant with established standards has long since been Microsoft's business strategy.

Quote

All people changing from one OS to another have problems to one extent or another. Some have more problems that others for various reasons.

I agree. For example, when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, there was almost an entire week during which a couple of my most commonly used applications lost some functionality.

[piyushsingh]

Evildave said:

If Vista is so wonderful, why in heaven's name have three boot modes? You should just launch Vista and live in perfect bliss knowing that everything you have works perfectly with it.

Having different boot modes doesnt mean u actually need all of them . Well rgreen ,may have answered this but i think i missed a part of this while i wasnt able to get in past 2 days.
What u suggest is exactly my setup. A vista plus ubuntu dual boot and a xp on vm , i dont think it was worth including xp in the boot config , but it depends on person to person. Earlier some of my programs were giving probs with vista but now i dont use the xp on vm to run any of those , just a few stay there. I have been able to work out how to run the older ones.
Well the discussion has two aspects , xp vs vista and another of linux vs windows and there is no point in making the 2nd one as vista vs linux. You cant compare a group of OSes with a single one. Xp vs vista - all who have continued with vista are aware of the fact that vista is surely better than xp , although u cant really compare xp and vista both running on 512 ram. And remember its not fair comparing an OS whose service pack is still to be publicly made available to another that is almost completely patched.
Linux vs windows - there is no point in fighting over this, what matters is what you want to use, what u r more comfortable with. The part which i like abt linux is freedom , no crap initially loaded into the setup , the factory loaded installations are totally junk but its the manufacturers who r to be blamed for that , not the os developers.

[snorg]

If ignorance is bliss count me in!
XP Home Forever.

[Evildave]

Another little growth market is that little 'One Laptop Per Child' initiative. The one that gives out free (or very inexpensive) rugged little computers to third world children? 100% Linux. After all, you pretty much double the price of the machine if you install a Microsoft OS onto it. Of all the charitable things Bill Gates has lately thought to try, giving out free Windows licenses to the poor apparently isn't something that could get past the Microsoft board room (if he even tried). Not that Vista would in fact even boot on one of those machines. Even if Microsoft released a specially developed OS to put on such machines, it wouldn't work well (they can't even make it work well with the latest, most expensive hardware), and they'd go out of their way to cripple it in all kinds of nasty ways. You may as well give the kids an 'etch-a-sketch' and call it a computer for what Microsoft would provide. An etch-a-sketch that would automatically erase its self at odd intervals without inverting and shaking, then demand Microsoft telephone activation, then stop working with a message about a 'revoked driver'.
http://laptop.org/

Anyway, those seeds are planted. When those children are grown, do you think they'll invest $500 (adjusted for inflation) for a proprietary Microsoft OS, or simply stay with what they know?

I absolutely agree that changing OS can be 'bad news'. Every time you went from DOS->Win3.1->98->XP->Vista->????, you're CHANGING THE OS. And it's been BAD NEWS, as every poor clueless TWIT who claims that switching to XP to Vista "should" be painful, because of these precedents.

Every couple of years Microsoft guts their OS and sells the new one as if it's compatible with the previous one. And it usually is... sort of.

If you're going to change from an XP OS to a sort-of compatible Vista OS, you may as well consider making a healthy change and going to a POSIX environment, where the rest of the world will be waiting for you in a few more years. You can try WINE if you like. Sure, it doesn't work very well for lots of Windows applications, but neither does Vista.

It's like Metric versus SAE. Sure, you can keep using those SAE wrenches (Microsoft's closed, proprietary systems) and spurn Metric (everything left that is a going concern is POSIX compliant), but finding nuts that your SAE wrenches fit keeps getting harder every year, and the only international customer a U.S. company will have for SAE based machinery is the UK. Maybe. But they're not fools. Sure, they still put 'miles' on the roads, but only backwater fools in the U.S. who think the world is 50 states continue to make new SAE based equipment. Pretty much everybody else went to Metric.

Have I had networking and wireless connectivity issues with Linux in the past? Yes. Were these caused by bad purchasing decisions? EVERY SINGLE ONE. Have I had similar problems with Windows versions with various wireless cards and USB dongles and such in the past? Oh very much YES. Samba (the thing that connects to Windows networks) will always be 'broken' when connecting to the latest (so-called) greatest Windows version because it is a closed standard that changes unnecessarily, so the people who maintain SMB have to painstakingly reverse-engineer it. It's even a royal pain in the butt just connecting older Windows PCs to networks run by newer Windows PCs, so I don't see why it's such a discovery that a Windows file share often can't be accessed out of the box from Linux.

[CaptainKeyboard]

To Jakthebomb,

I like your comments about Windows Vista SP1. They are very interesting. The facts that you mentioned are entertaining than educational. If you want to be a good writer, you need to use good spelling and proper English usage.

Strate is spelled straight. Wheather is spelled either weather or whether. Leopard is spelled Leopard. Initialy is spelled initially. Thats is spelled that's. ram for random-accessed-memory is written as RAM. Plain ram is an animal. Blogers is Bloggers.

Use capital letters as the first letters in the beginning of sentences. The pronoun i is written as I.

Good grammar and spelling make your sentences make your sentences easier to read and understand.

This reply was written by Captain Keyboard, your right typewriter for that write type of job. I am a professional typewriter who is an old-fashioned typist. My motto is "Type it right the first time or don't type it at all."

[mphenterprises]

Hi CaptainKeyboard and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




Let me try to squash any potential conflict. It is great that you would like to advise individuals on correct English usage; however, this is not an English class. The information shared is more important than the spelling of a word or the way a word is used. Believe me, I understand that seeing a misspelled word or misused word is annoying but it is not any one person's place to correct the spelling, grammar, or context of another person's post. People take that very personally and may sometimes lash out at the person who is attempting to make a honest correction.

Additionally, this forum may be based in the United States but we get people from all over the world who post here. Some may have a better grasp of the English language than others. The best thing we can do is be patient with that person and read the post for the content, not the context.

Now, if the information itself is misleading or wrong, then by all means step up and correct the person providing the information.

[jakthebomb]

i have no problem with your help on Spelling. i rely compleatly on Spell Checker. this is why i use the Vista Speech Recognition for all of my College Reports. also i only know English, and i am from U.S.A.
Has anyone tryed the IE 8 beta yet?

jakthebomb

[CTKEN]

My friend, I was a huge MS fan until Vista and Office 2007. My company used to be a Microsoft Certified Partner. There are very few MS apps we don't have and use.

I am running our PCs with Intel Core2 Quad 2.40 chips, 4GHz of the fastest RAM we could find, and 2 10,000 RPM internal disk drives. The drives are configured to have all application related files on one HD and all data files on the second HD thus preventing the need to have one disk seeking both the application and the data. This is not a RAID configuration; it is a performance configuration. (We do use RAID 5 for servers and NAS/SAN.) Each PC has a video card with 512 MB of RAM, Intel GHz Ethernet cards, and sound cards. The concept behind using task specific cards is to take as much burden off the motherboard as possible and reduce the use of physical RAM to keep the use of virtual RAM to a minimum. Our infrastructure is entirely at GHz speed (routers, switches, etc.). As you may have guessed, these are custom built machines with the best compatible components. These are not low end toys. We are not gamers; we run very complex financial models and performance is critical.

Any application not required for our needs was uninstalled. That includes turning off any unused Vista Windows feature. All non essential services have been shut down. We use Diskeeper 2008 to defrag the HD's during off hours everyday. Our IE7 cache is clean each night including cookies except for useful cookies. We run two full anti virus/malware/spyware/etc each week. We run more specific scans everyday. Also we use real time scans on any new data received from any source external to the PCs including files retried from our servers, NAS, or SAN.

I did not indicate any Apple OS was superior to Vista, so I am not sure where you got that notion. Frankly I am not concerned about the appearance of an app's GUI provided the GUI is not an impediment for users or performance. The growing list of software that will not run on Vista SP1 is not from some "bloggers" site as you seem to think. The MS knowledge base has an article updated as needed of applications that either will not run or have impaired features after installing SP1. You are not correct in saying every vendor has SP1 patches; there are number of highly sophisticated non-retail, non-mass consumer applications with the same issues. MS does not post those applications because the impact is on 100's to several thousands of users. Typically the applications cost about $150,000 on the low end to in excess of $20 million towards the top; developing, testing, and implementing code changes for mission critical software are not trivial.

I would suggest that it might be useful for you to do significantly more research from industry trade journals. One of my favorites is only available to industry insiders, and the subscription price is $1,130 per year. It is one of about a dozen such journals to which we subscribe. Also you may wish to become a client of at least two of the following firms: Gartner, The Tower Group, The Tabb Group, Forrester Research, and several other similar firms. I believe the information and access to the top IT analysts in the IT business are well worth the costs. I recommend two because their advice is not always completely consistent. This allows us to go back to each firm and challenge them on the differences. I have only myself to blame for not following some pretty expensive advise. Should you find my suggestions worthy, you just might learn a bit more than you seem to know already.

[CTKEN]

piyushsingh wrote: "And remember its not fair comparing an OS whose service pack is still to be publicly made available to another that is almost completely patched."



I must take exception to this comment. I believe it is reasonable to expect that software developed over five years and supposedly tested to the highest degree ever should be relatively bug free. Too many people are willing to accept substandard software. If I try pay for a product that makes numerous claims with a defective credit card or damaged bills of cash, what do you think might happen? Would the vendor wait for over a year to allow me to fix my credit card or come back with crisp new bills?



This comment applies to many packaged software products. I am not saying a product must be 100% bullet proof; nothing is perfect. Having said that, I find it reprehensible companies allow sloppy code to be sold. In the case of Vista, I feel like a beta tester. Why should anyone who purchased Vista after it went gold pay full price for a product with some serious issues? Should we get a rebate for finding the numerous issues in Vista on MS's behalf?



A very quick story: I ran into an unusual problem and contacted MS support. I went through Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 support with resolution. MS told me on the phone and confirmed via email, they did not have a solution for my problem. Much to my surprise I received a call two days later from a senior analyst with the Vista research development team and a director (?) of Vista architecture. We spent nearly three hours on the call; most of the call consisted of me explaining in extreme detail what happen and trying to answer some very difficult and narrow questions. Remind me again why people pay for the product?