Tom's Hardware Looks at Microsoft Vista Beta 338
RockClimbingFool writes "Tom's Hardware has a pretty good overview of what the current beta version of Microsoft Windows Vista has to offer. The article is written from an average user's perspective, specifically highlighting exactly which differences the average computer user can expect to see from Windows XP to Windows Vista. It covers everything from IE7, to the new Windows Aero interface, to brand new games." But if you'd like your eye candy open source and downloadable now, check out Lunapark6's review of the current version of Ubuntu Dapper, with "emphasis placed on helping someone set up the system for everyday desktop usage."
Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Insightful)
I liked it (Score:2)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:2)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Funny)
Timothy, we didn't miss you much.
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Informative)
Watch out for the extra spaces slashcode adds. There is a way to make this specific to slashdot.org (this rule will apply anywhere Timothy's site is linked) with Firefox 1.5+ , but I'm too lazy to look it up.
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty fucked up, if you ask me.
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:2)
Not Necessary but Useful (Score:3, Informative)
Necessary I don't know, but it is useful because so many people out there are totally unaware of the great features offered by alternative OSes. Regarding Ubuntu, in no particular order: Aero-like features already available via Xgl (while Vista is not yet released), centralized package management system, 1-click full system update and security patches installation (under Windows, MS-only software is upgraded), generally easier to use than Windows (according to one of my family member who is an average desk
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Out there is not in here. The typical /. denizen is more than aware of the alternatives.
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:5, Informative)
Funny, I re-installed XP only 6 months ago and had to spend hours just getting the OS up and running with updates and drivers and such. Then another several hours putting on applications such as Visual Studio, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc, and I'm not including games. Just over the weekend I installed Fedora Core 5 and after an install that took less time than Windows I spent about 1 hour running the updates and had myself a usable workstation, with Anjuta, OpenOffice, Firefox (with plugins), etc. And no, this isn't new hardware. All my hardware was purchased before Windows XP was released, so the age of the OSs shouldn't be a problem when it comes to drivers.
But maybe you were counting customizing the look and feel. Because most distros don't come with Nerzhul as the destop wallpaper I had to do that, whereas for windows it's just the blank blue for me. So yeah, you have to spend a little time customizing Linux, but at least you can do it, whereas for Windows you get what they decide looks nice to the eyes.
In case anyone is wondering, Nerzhul goes on Linux [fedoraforum.org] because I can make everything blend in better with a dark wallpaper, whereas the simple blue on Windows blends in better with the blue-ish theme in XP.
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:5, Interesting)
I have been using, contributing, and developping source code for alternative OSes and various open source projects since 1998; all of my 5 personal boxes have been running Linux/BSD only since 2000; and 95% of the server and desktop machines I have installed or administered at my previous and current jobs have been running Linux/BSD. So I think I have a pretty good view on the advantages (and inconvenients) of alternative OSes.
Let me reply to your questions. It is true that Xgl is very new and will continuously need to improve. It is true that not ALL apps are packaged by Ubuntu, however with a current count of 17,000+ it is way enough for an average desktop user (I have personally only had to package myself obscure command-line tools that nobody else should ever need). However you are fundamentally wrong when stating that "it has still got a long way to go" for the desktop user. The remaining issues can basically all be regrouped under 2 banners: "lack of open source drivers" or "lack of proprietary software XYZ under Linux". Those 2 things are VERY important, but the whole framework for a successful operating system is already here. If your hardware has open source drivers and if you don't depend on a particular proprietary application, then there are virtually nothing preventing you from fully enjoying Ubuntu as a desktop user. Unfortunately I also recognize that it is apparently going to take quite some time to convince the remaining "closed" hardware vendors to release open specs of their devices, and that commercial software vendors are also only very slowly starting to consider Linux as a target OS.
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Your post seems to emphasize the negative sides of your experience with Linux. But as Columcille put it in his reply to my post, it is all a question of perspective. I would like you to look at your experience from another viewpoint, so look at my comments below...
What happened to you here is NOT the norm in Ubuntu. For most users, Ubuntu correctly detects and configures the sound & graphic cards. It's not 100% reliable (else you wouldn't be here to complain), but you shouldn't assume it to be totally unreliable either :-) The current situation is already rather good (it works in most cases), and the Ubuntu developers are continuing their efforts to fix the remaining cases. So you should expect it to work when you install Ubuntu on another box.
Enabling the secondary video output is indeed a feature that often relies on chipset-specific features and there is no common API in Linux to configure this. Which explain your problems. Not a lot of work has been put into making this feature more user-friendly because only a minority of desktop users need it. I am not trying to justify the poor support for it, I am just explaining the current state of affairs. So once again please realize you belong to those 10% of users that, unfortunately, need to use something that has not yet been made user-friendly in Linux in general. The remaining 90% of Linux users don't care at all about this feature so it is not a pb for them (IOW you shouldn't expect your bad experience as something that HAS to happen to anybody trying out Linux).
Why did it take you a long time ? You may not realize it, but your current knowledge of Windows apps is something that has taken you months/years to acquire. You seem to think that somehow, it's not normal that Linux doesn't provide you with a similar knowledge almost "instantly and magically" :-) But the truth is that, as with Windows, you have to gain this knowledge by yourself. So you shouldn't see that as an inconvenient of Linux only. This is an inconvenient present in ALL OSes.
Also something that upsets me (and this thread proves it once again) is that EACH time people criticize Linux (and they have the right to do it since Linux is not perfect), somehow NOBODY ever points out the current huge flaws inherent to Windows environments in general. Namely: no package management system, no way to fully upgrade the system, quality of third party drivers not guaranteed, lack of innovation (Windows == one of the last OS to have been ported to AMD64), vendor lock-in, poor security track record, costly proprietary applications, forced h/w upgrades (Vista will require 512 MB of RAM), poor interoperability with other systems in enterprise environments, etc.
Re:Not Necessary but Useful (Score:2)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Interesting)
You mean it is not useful, when assessing an OS, to compare it to the competition?
You must be a windows user.
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:2)
AFAIK, its still a matter of booting into "safe mode" and then doing a dpkg-reconfigure (or a hand-edit of
To paraphrase what they used to say about IBM (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:4, Informative)
Kind of. More like Linux pretender wanna-be geeks. Or Linux geeks who have to use Windows at work.
My blog [blogspot.com] has gotten most of its hits [extremetracking.com] from my Slashdot sig. Click here to check out the most popular software:
http://extremetracking.com/open;sum?login=wrperso
For the record, in case things change:
Browser: Firefox 1.5 - 45.33%
Operating System: Windows XP - 60.97%
Most of us here have huge interest in how Vista turns out, if only because our employers will put it on our machines.
Re:Can we leave the politics out of it? (Score:3, Interesting)
Slashdot is a self-proclaimed news site. Spare us the "if you don't like it" crap, parent poster was right.
40 pages (Score:2, Informative)
Competing hot tag (Score:2)
Re:Competing hot tag (Score:2)
Come on, Timmy, you know eleventy billion people are going to submit a "ZOMG Dapper is out!" story as soon as it hits the servers. Just give it some time...
Re:Competing hot tag (Score:2)
You must be new here.
They will post a story on the release of Dapper, if only to give us all a chance to cry DUPE!!!11!!!11!1 [slashdot.org]
Give me a break (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is relevant to the article how ... ?
It does nothing good for the Open Source movement to desperately insert some plug at any opportunity. It just reinforces the notion that it *needs* the desperation (which may not be false, but that's another subject). See also: religious cults, Amway (or any MLM), smokers who quit, Libertarians, and the Apple Macintosh. If people just want you to Shut Up Already, you're not helping your pet movement.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2)
Blanket advertising helped microsofts level of market penetration. Not everything MS does is bad.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2)
You're joking, right? A lot of things contributed to Microsoft's success, but advertising isn't one of them. Microsoft doesn't even do that much advertising, and what they do do, completely sucks.
I understand the bias but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I understand the bias but.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I understand the bias but.. (Score:2)
If the mozilla developers announced some new feature in Firefox version 2.0, and the editorial pointed out that such a feature was already in Opera, would it be biased towards Opera ?
If, as you say, you are genuinely interested in the progress of computing, why aren't you interested to know if a feature is reall
Re:I understand the bias but.. (Score:2)
Except that they never do, other than for certain things (Linux and Firefox to name two). Hence why it's a bias.
Re:I understand the bias but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, if you want to get picky about it, Windows predates Linux, so little features like disk access, task scheduling, memory management, etc were all in Windows before they were in Linux...
There are a lot of things that were in Windows before they made it into KDE or Gnome, although I can't be sure that there weren't "independent" alternatives available; I'm thinking specifically along the lines of control p
1 page version (Score:5, Informative)
I hope you read fast (Score:3, Interesting)
This site has quite possibly committed the worst sins of "maximizing advertising revenue at the expense of usability" of any site I would ever admit to browsing of (admit, mind you).
Re:I hope you read fast (Score:2)
Re:I hope you read fast (Score:2)
Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I was able to get through about 30 pages of this "review" and pretty much gave up. Hundreds of screen captures of Vista "stuff" with a caption describing said capture does not a review make.
So, I went to the last page to work my way back for summary and recommendation info. Turns out, last page is the summary. Save yourself some time, the gist of this article is:
This is a review?
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:2)
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:3, Funny)
Welcome to Intarweb 2.0
KFG
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish they'd made an argument or two to support that conclusion. After reading TFA (or rather looking at it, it's very low-wordage), I have come to the conclusion that it has a very nice user interface, it will be easier for average people to use, and if the security features work as advertised, they might have that particular problem licked. I think it will also spur the Windows fanboys to make hundreds of pronouncements about Vista's unquestioned superiority over Mac OS X, on the basis of two interlocking arguments:
These things given, Vista is a better operating system. But...
I think BillG and SteveB are convinced that MS will become the American Megatrends of the Internet-connected future if they don't take the lead and kill Google, which is causing them to gamble big on web services -- I just don't see such things as the end-all that the Win32 OS is.
If MS really wanted to make money off web services, they'd fully adopt open web standards, and then buy a telco or 3.
2 cents
Re:Vista review? or tutorial? WTF? (Score:2)
This dialog box is a complete mess. Why even have this service? Why is everything on Windows so obfuscated as to need a wordy, three option dialog box just to ask people if they'd like to turn off the eye candy when the computer's performance suffers. [tomshardware.com]
Dialog boxes like this are exactly why Microsoft is sliding farther and faster behind the simplicity and flexibility that Mac OS X and Linux represent. What a goddamn joke that Windows even needs such a dialog box or the tangled mass of crap tha
Hey Jed, why you writin' so slow? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hey Jed, why you writin' so slow? (Score:2)
but realy, this is re-freaking-tarded. Last 3 posts of tomshardware on
Re:Hey Jed, why you writin' so slow? (Score:2)
Screenshots and nothing more (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh and typical Tom's 40 pages of screen shots means 40x the ad revenue [next].
If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:5, Insightful)
I stopped reading when I got to this point.
If this is supposed to be "Linux For The Masses" and it (1) can't recognize common commodity video cards correctly, and (2) requires you to hand-edit a config file to correct the situation...
Well, let's just say I won't be recommending it to Mom anytime soon.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, I'd just set it up, plug it in and show her where 'the internet' is.
You must be rich (Score:2)
Oh yeah, you have to replace one word in one config file. If people can't do this, they deserve to shell out money for over-expensive crap like Vista.
Re:You must be rich (Score:4, Interesting)
This is basically all of humanity though.
People buying HDTV early without doing research? Getting stuck with weird modes that can't do the copy protection as well...
People buying gas guzzling cars that need maintanance every two weeks.... oh well...
People buying over priced power sucking desktops for the most basics of tasks...
etc, etc, etc.
The recurring theme is "I shouldn't have to learn stuff to do stuff" like learn how to use a computer to use one, or how a car works to own one, or the gist of the HD specs before shelling out five grand on a TV, etc, etc...
Really I think people deserve what they get. If you're too lazy to actually work for something [e.g. a free and stable desktop OS] then you don't deserve one.
Tom
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:4, Insightful)
"I stopped reading when I got to this point."
Well maybe you should have started reading the paragraph at the top of the article that explains its audience and purpose. Here, I'll save you the effort of clicking the back button:
"*Disclaimer this article was written for Linux enthusiasts. If you are coming from the Windows side and the command line seems intimidating you can accomplish all of the updates and installs from Synaptic or Adept package manager applications. Both have nice graphics and require nothing more than checking the box next to the program you want to install and then selecting the install button and you are set to go. I prefer the command line because it is faster."
"If this is supposed to be "Linux For The Masses" and it (1) can't recognize common commodity video cards correctly, and (2) requires you to hand-edit a config file to correct the situation..."
Changing video drivers is extremely simple in Ubuntu. I should know, because I boot Ubuntu from my external USB disk on about 6 different machines every week. That, incidentally, is something that you cannot even dream of doing on Windows.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:2)
I found the best bet was to either do a text install or boot in "safe graphics" mode and then grab the fglrx driver and do a "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg". Even then, I'm not very impressed with fglrx anyway. Its incredibly unstable. I suppose thats what I get for buying ATI.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:5, Informative)
Well, yes, most likely.
Oh god, I can't help it (Score:4, Funny)
So your mom would have an easier time installing windows?
In Soviet Russia, Windows installs your mom!
Is there a 'nonsensical' mod (and would it be + or - around here)?
Re:Oh god, I can't help it (Score:2)
Yo mama so Russian, windows installs HER!!
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:2)
What about spyware and virii? Or is your mom going to trust those error-message-like pop-ups that say, "Get your anti-spyware here!"
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh.
Look, I've said this before, but I'll try again (with the foreknowledge that flames and/or bad karma await):
Editing config files is fine for the typical slashdot user, but an absolute stopping point for 99% of normal computer users.
If you ever require the user to edit a config file by hand -- or drop to the command line, for that matter -- you have failed. (Assuming you are striving for mass-market acceptance, that is. If not, well, not, but somehow I think "mass-market" is exactly what Ubuntu is striving for.)
If the GUI tool is "sketchy", then the problem is not to provide a config-file backdoor, but to fix the freakin' GUI tool.
All this is a shame, really, because on the whole, Ubuntu looks like one of the most user-friendly Linux distros I've seen.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:2)
I find it trivial to sudoedit a config file. It's certainly no slower than going through a dozen windows/tabs/etc to find something. And the fact that YOU CAN fix almost anything in OSS desktops is part of their usefulness.
I've had to hack a few projects [like QEMU and the kernel] to get them to build to my specs. I don't see that as a failure because in the commercial side THEY WOULD JUST NOT WORK AT ALL.
Tom
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather remote admin/config a box through SSH then through VNC or rdesktop [neither of which have any security.
Is there some part of "average user" that you're not comprehending?
The average user doesn't install SSH or VNC, and they take it back to the store when the graphics card dies.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:4, Insightful)
I would argue that editing text files is an atrocious form of configuration modification - outside of disaster-recovery scenarios - for everyone, regardless of skill level.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:2)
Let me amend my statement to "Editing config files might be an acceptable backup plan for the typical slashdot user..."
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:3, Insightful)
Mac OS through version 9 did quite well with no command line whatsoever. Only extreme cases that no normal person should need to encounter (MacsBug, Open Firmware) would you be faced with something that even remotely resembled a command line.
Re:If this is the best... keep trying. (Score:3, Funny)
I had a similar problem with linux the other day. I didn't want the light or noise (not to mention the power drain) associated with starting my linux machine so I left it off. For some reason, I was unable to do anything with it. It was completely unresponsive. This is completely unacceptable.
ps. There was one obvious solution to the touchscreen/lightning ball issue:
Re:That's the blessing and curse of GPL (Score:2)
No, blame Linux. If Linux had a stable kernel ABI (like, say, every other remotely mainstream OS), so 0.0.0.1 kernel revisions/patches didn't break every binary module, requiring a recompile, then video card manufacturers (not to mention everyone else who writes drivers) would be able to create a simple, consistent driver package that didn't require intimate knowledge of your exact kernel version to install.
Re:That's the blessing and curse of GPL (Score:2)
The idea of an unstable ABI for drivers is ludicrous, no matter what Linus says.
Linux would be well-served to ditch the FOSS zealotry in this case and let people offer binary drivers.
Re:That's the blessing and curse of GPL (Score:2)
Issues (Score:3, Interesting)
Current Problems:
1) Not all wmv, avi, or mpegs play properly. Some of them can take 5-10 minutes to load and then give an error. The exact same file plays flawlessly in XP
2) IE 7 needs has some compatibility issues. I understand that some pages have issues as they were designed for IE 6, but when Firefox and Opera render them correctly, that's an issue
3) The new file system.....garbage......I don't need to be babied. The simplified file system is nice for normal users, but I want an option to have full control over my file system.
4) I like the fact that an instance of a program dies when an error occurs, instead of the whole file system, but an error message would be nice.
5) Sometimes when the processor usage gets high the screen goes black and won't revert back. That may need to be fixed.
There are some nice features, but they have a lot of work to do before this thing is ready.
Re:Issues (Score:2)
About point #4, I once had that happen multiple times on a Win98 machine, but it turned out to be a dud power supply (as if melting half its RAM and killing a video card weren't clues enough). Other than that, I've seen stuff like that happen only one other time, and that was using defrag on a machine with GoBack installed. On both instances, no error message.
they have a lot of work to do before this thing is ready
I've got my money on Christmas 2010. What do you think?
Is it THAT hard for Tom's (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is it THAT hard for Tom's (Score:2, Informative)
XP released in 2002? (Score:4, Informative)
First thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The first things I notice:
1.) This review is forty pages. Thanks, toms hardware [next] for really cashing [next] in on those ad [next] impressions. They've been doing this for years, and if they didn't actually have substance to their reviews, it would be remarkably annoying. Err. Something.
2.) The very first screenshots of the Aero vs. Vista Basic interfaces look identical. Just to make sure, I loaded them up in photoshop. The "preview" window is exactly the same between the two. What?
Still reading...
Cue Pirate Bay Joke, 3, 2, 1... (Score:3, Funny)
There's Pirate Bay [slashdot.org]. Oh, wait...
So... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, Vista-only apps. Yay. Now why won't they work in XP? Some essential feature of XP missing? Or just to boost Vista sales? Want new game? Buy new Windows. And of course a new computer, because even if your current hardware could handle the gfx of the game if it was running under XP, it won't handle compound load of the game and Vista.
Re:So... (Score:4, Informative)
A rather extensive list can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Wind
-New network stack
-New audio stack
-New driver framework
-New printing architecture
-New windowing system (DWM)
There are a substantial number of 'behind the scenes' changes in Vista. But for some reason the Slashdot crowd seems to think that the UI is the only thing that's changed. Oh well.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, you've just discovered how all of us who run Windows 2000 have been feeling for the last few years.
Microsoft has been holding back features from Win2000 for ages to encourage uptake of XP. Perhaps the most annoying example is their ClearType screen-font technology for LCDs; ClearType is XP-only, for reasons that I've never found particularly compelling. And the last two versions of Windows Media Player have been XP-only too. There's no reason that stuff couldn't be made to run on XP, given that XP is just 2000 with a facelift; so it's no surprise that they would pull the same act with Vista.
Re:So... (Score:3)
Eye candy few will see (Score:2)
Are you shitting me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fourty. Fucking. Pages?
Look, Tom's hardware used to be a useful site. It's not anymore. Stop posting their paginated ad-cancer garbage until they realize that so long as they make their stuff intentionally difficult to read, people won't read it.
Is this really enough? (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong. I welcome a much needed update to Windows. The features of Vista, however, aren't quite wowing me. The performance should be worse than XP given the heaftier requirements. There's still no WinFS, promised back in '96. The Win64 API is pretty bad (I'm a developer). Other than eye candy and clones of the most popular Mac OS features, what will I be getting for my money?
Stability, performance, and enterprise features are what I want... not an updated Minesweeper. Will the Bluetooth protocol stack be less problematic than XP's? I hope so. Will they support WPA2 natively, without 170MB of updates? Will IPV6 be native? How about IPSEC support? Will it actually work this time? How bad is the new Windows shell? Is it close enough to Bash or even csh to be useful? What's Task Manager like? Do I still have to wait seconds for it to appear when a process runs amok? Does the UI remain responsive during heavy calculations (I do a lot of 3D)? Can I install games without worrying about which version of DirectX is installed? Will the new version of Office install things I'll have to disable, like toolbars, fast find, and Word integration into Outlook express? Do I still need to press Ctrl+Alt+Delete to do things?
These reviews rarely touch on any issue that's actually important to me. Yes, it looks pretty and it should dammit. But does it work as well as it looks? That's what really matters. Microsoft keeps pulling features and slipping the release date. I doubt the reviewers remember Cairo.
I beta tested Windows 95 / Chicago and recall how slow that thing was. The production release was hardly much faster, despite the assurances. In fact, the beta versions of Windows 95 ran more stable, IMO. The graphics were even slicker. I ran Win95 beta until Microsoft shipped OSR2. It was a matter of necessity.
When will Ars Technica do a thorough review? That I might be interested in.
Re:Is this really enough? (Score:2, Informative)
> Will the Bluetooth protocol stack be less problematic than XP's? I hope so.
Yes, they've expanded profile support substantially.
> Will they support WPA2 natively, without 170MB of updates?
You bet.
> Will IPV6 be native?
Yes -- IPv6 is a first class citizen in Vista, the entire OS has been scrubbed for v6 blockers, and they actively want people running v6 only during the betas (since it's expected to be a major use case
ReactOS 0.3 (Score:2, Insightful)
ReactOS(or a fork of it, once it is stable) will address/remove.
* DOS back slashes. Internet/C/UNIX slashes should be used. While windows internally understands '/' in filenames, many command utilities rely on '/' for flags.
* Two char dos new line. There is no real reason to keep using \r\n in text files to represent a new line. It wastes one byte for every line of every text file.
* Drive Letters are an obsolete and limiting conc
Not Gonna Happen (Score:5, Insightful)
I only bring it up because it means I see about a zillion different companies and talk to their IT Directors/CIOs/Whatevers, Fortune 500 down to Dave's Community Bank-member FDIC, every week.
They are all Microsoft shops. Yeah, they have some small-u unix boxes (various flavors of linux, bsd, solaris, or etc.) running important stuff. But the core of their network, the centralized authentication servers and groupware servers (read Active Directory and Exchange) -- which means their app servers are typically Microsoft-based even if their DB and web servers aren't -- serve the core of what they do.
None of them have any interest in Vista. Many have recently in the past year or two finally rid themselves of the last vestiges of 9x boxes. Basically, Windows 2000 satisfied any and all needs they had. Everyone running Windows 2003/R2 had a Microsoft partner consultancy come in to "help" them with their network.
That's not to say they're anxious to jump to other platforms. Most show at least mild interest in my choice of a 12" PowerBook G4 to travel with and would start switching if "no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft". But no one is ready to start seriously investigating a wholesale switch to a non-Microsoft OS on desktops or servers.
There are many reasons for this.
But the core point is that enterprises have been pretty happy with their core OS since circa 2000. Everything since then is just features added to satisfy some niche constituency.
Vista would be dead on arrival if the PC manufacturers weren't so in bed with Microsoft that everyone who buys a PC after Xmas of 2007 had it coming to them by default. The reason OS X and Ubuntu, et al, are seeing their market share creep up is because they have finally caught up to the feature set and a bit of the mind share Microsoft had 6-7 years ago.
The computers in my house -- including my wife and kid's -- run OS X. My computers at work run Win XP, OS X, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and Open BSD. I am familiar with Win Server 2k and 2k3, many Linux distros, and various flavors of Unix.
Operating systems are a solved problem. The devils are in various niche details. Rational people with complete information (I heart Adam Smith) should be running OS X on the desktop and whatever they want/have to use on the server.
Flame at will.
No Flames Here. (Score:4, Interesting)
XP is certainly not perfect, but frankly, it's "good enough" in many ways that the pain of switching and/or upgrading is just not worth it for a large organization.
I've been using XP as my primary OS for years, and while it certainly has its share of atrocities (as do all OS's), it's the first MSFT OS I've ever actually found to be usable for the long term.
Would I like it to be better? Sure. But Vista is going in the wrong direction. Adding craptacular 3D UI is amusing, but I'd vastly prefer that they solve the problem of "I have to reinstall from scratch every year or so to clear out the vestiges of crud".
And yes, I know I'm making contradictory statements here...
Here's an example: (Score:2)
Microsoft knows that an example of a valid domain is example.com, not treyresearch.com
one of the links is an IE killer (Score:3, Funny)
I'm just glad we're finally switching to gentoo at the office, and good timing too: i'll be getting it installed in a day or so.
So careful with those links...
I think I know MS's game plan. (Score:3, Interesting)
Which, I suppose, isn't all that bad a thing. The *nix OSes have such a long lead on all the important featuressystem uptimes, system security, solid code base, etcthat it probably really is best for Microsoft to focus on their XBox systems and cheezy Windows game-focused OS.
I'm pretty sure all the n00bs will be perfectly happy with Vista. It is very pretty, after all. Meanwhile, OS X, BSDs, and Linuxes start looking more and more appealing to people who actually want to get things done for real.
Re:I think I know MS's game plan. (Score:2)
Re:Still a turd (Score:2)
Re:I Hate Toms... (Score:2)
Virtual Desktops (Score:2)
Re:Virtual Desktops (Score:2)
Easily. There's still a lot of people out there that think they have to shut down one application before launching another. I can easily imagine them switching from virtual desktop to virtual desktop closing applications as they go.
Re:Virtual Desktops (Score:2)
Re:I Hate Toms... (Score:2)
Re:I Hate Toms... (Score:2)
I don't see how attempting to outshine translates to copy. If someone has a good || successful idea, it's only human nature to try to imitate it.
The sad thing is, such mindless slashbotism such as the parent is probably going to be modded Insightful.
Give me that Empty Technology! (Score:2)
Re:Slow month. (Score:2)