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Thurrott Completes Vista Review

  Submitted by anonymous Windows 153 Comments

Right before the end of 2006, Paul Thurrott completed his 8-part review of Windows Vista. His final conclusion: “Vista is a better operating system than the competition, for reasons that are both technical and practical. But for the hundreds of millions of people who will move to Vista in the coming years, all that will really matter is that it’s a major improvement over XP. And it most certainly is that as well.”

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Thom Holwerda

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153 Comments

  1. 2007-01-06 5:27 pm
    mcduck

    Vista really is a major improvement over XP.

    Let’s hope, for the sake of all, that Microsoft manages to keep Vista more secure than XP.

  2. 2007-01-06 5:27 pm
    mlopes

    Vista is a better operating system than the competition

    Paul is clearly only considering the other Microsoft’s operating systems as competition and ignores the rest. Linux and Mac OS X.

    Making such a bold claim should be a reserved sentence for the fanboys. Oh, wait…

    • 2007-01-06 5:46 pm
      GreatBunzinni

      So Vista is the best OS ever to be released and it is miles ahead of XP? Who would have thought that a blog named “SuperSite for Windows”, which sports a whole dedicated section praising the greatness of Windows Vista, would write a rational and impartial review?

      But there’s a subtle point in that giant superfanboy essay. It starts off mentioning the competition. When was the last time that a MS Windows review mentioned the competition? Now even the paid chills under their astroturfing attempt feel the need to mention how much is the competition inferior. To me that only means one thing: other OSs are starting to become viable platforms and capable of outperforming blow for blow the products churned out by MS. And that is a good thing.

      • 2007-01-06 6:24 pm
        sappyvcv

        What you said reeks of spin. Not that I’m saying you’re wrong, it’s just kind of funny how you came to your conclusions.

    • 2007-01-06 6:58 pm
      unoengborg

      I have too little experience of Vista to tell if he is right or wrong but judging from feature lists, screen shots and reviews, it is very close to what is offered by MacOS-X and modern Linux.

      Even if Thurrott is right, and Vista actually is better than MacOS or every Linux distro you can download right now, will it be better than the Linux you can download in April, November,…?

      Both Linux and MacOS evolve very fast and have frequent updates, while I guess that Vista will remain more or less the same for quite some time.

      As Mr Thurrott points out Vista is quite expensive, this means that many people will probably not upgrade existing windows installations, but rather get it when they buy a new computer. People that actually decide to upgrade existing systems will often wait to do that upgradeuntil Microsoft have released a service pack or two.

      This means that the uptake of Vista in the market will be quite slow. My guess is the XP will still be the most common OS for business use three years from now. Windows XP had the same problem by the way, that in spite of the fact that Microsoft got a lot of XP sales from people upgrading from win95 and win 98. These people had a lot to gain from upgrading. Upgrading from one version of a NT (i.e winXP) to another is a much smaller step that many people may not bother take

      So, the interesting question is how will Vista compete a year or so from now. As I see it it doesn’t look too promising for Microsoft.

      • 2007-01-06 7:36 pm
        CrazyDude0

        Do you really believe that user experience in Linux or BSD is better than Windows?

        Ok i agree on OSX, it has a quite polished and aesthetic UI and it’s UI is very well designed except few things like application menu not attached to it etc.

        But GNOME and KDE, i don’t think the UI is that nice.

        1. Fonts sucks, that is my biggest complaint. Even after copying MS fonts, it still doesn’t bod well.

        2. Spacing of various UI controls like spacing of menu items in KDE is quite bad.

        3. Windows are too bland, look how OS X windows have a small shadow and have a clean crisp look.

        4. Consistency is not so good in various applications. For example in windows almost all applications have F5 to refresh the contents. Not so in Linux UIs.

        Ofcourse above all this, the lack of application is a deal killer for me. In linux you get substandard replacements for well known applications like:

        1. Evolution is a bad clone of outlook express and outlook. Try reading newsgroups in it and see how miserably it fails.

        2. gaim is a replacemnet for more powerful messenger clients like yahoo messenger and MSN messenger. Yes it is one for all but it is substandard to either one of those.

        3. open office is a memory hog and is kind of a bad copy of MS office. The UI is bulky too.

        4. Not even one kick ass IDE like visual studio. I know you will say kdevelop is better but again kdevelop copied visual studio but couldn’t do such a good job.

        5. I feel the graphical debugger on widnows like windbg and visual studio debugger are little bit better than gdb. Though i can use ddd but it is quite slow then. Also setting up kernel debugging in windows is a piece of cake, not so much on Linux.

        6. There is no replacement for softice (the best debugger IMHO) on Linux.

        7. No standandard development kits like DDK on Windows and no proper documentation like MSDN.

        So all in all from power user and developer point of view, i think Windows and OSX are far ahead of Linux. And again it is my opinion so feel free to disagree.

        • 2007-01-06 8:39 pm
          mouth

          Ok i agree on OSX, it has a quite polished and aesthetic UI and it’s UI is very well designed except few things like application menu not attached to it etc.

          I thought this as well when I was a Windows and BeOS user, but the fact that the menu is infinitely deep makes it a very easy target to hit. This choice was not accidental by Apple, and why the Apple menu is in the upper left corner, and the Spotlight (10.4+) search icon is in the upper right corner.

          For more information, please examine Fitts’ Law (http://www.yorku.ca/mack/phd.html).

          Edited 2007-01-06 20:41

          • 2007-01-06 11:42 pm
            edwdig

            Menu on top being better or worse than a menu per window depends on what you do with the computer.

            Most work I do on a computer is coding and command line stuff. The mouse is almost entirely for menus and switching windows. The mouse cursor usually rests near the top of the window anyway. I don’t need to move it much. I’m sure if you use Photoshop all day, having the menu on top is a nice shortcut. But for me, it would just mean a lot more mouse movement.

        • 2007-01-06 10:49 pm
          Moochman

          >4. Not even one kick ass IDE like visual studio. I know you will say kdevelop is better but again kdevelop copied visual studio but couldn’t do such a good job.

          Have you tried the latest version of NetBeans or Eclipse?

          • 2007-01-07 12:30 am
            villagra

            Have you tried Visual Studio 2005? ¿Sql Server Managment Studio? ¿Expresion designer? …

        • 2007-01-06 11:00 pm
          cyclops

          I don’t even want to reply seriously I don’t, but a comment that gets five and is inaccurate.

          “Do you really believe that user experience in Linux or BSD is better than Windows? ”

          I use linux, and windows. I know a little how linux works so yes *MY* experience is better. I suspect strongly that for a novice user the experiences will be pretty similar. The *only* user that will suffer is the more experienced(sic) Microsoft user, who will have to learn things differently which will take time and effort, in the short term to be at least as competent.

          “Ok i agree on OSX, it has a quite polished and aesthetic UI and it’s UI is very well designed except few things like application menu not attached to it etc” – Then Buy an Apple…you would have had a nicer looking desktop years ago. Although I suspect your just conceding a point because you would have a hard time making it.

          “But GNOME and KDE, i don’t think the UI is that nice.” Pick one…I’m pretty certain that they are both different, and I’m sure that its not strictly true about either. I actually use XFCE so I will stick to that.

          “1. Fonts sucks, that is my biggest complaint. Even after copying MS fonts, it still doesn’t bod well. ” – Simply not true…even on a flat screen. X has been plagued with font problems for years, but thats just not true anymore.

          “2. Spacing of various UI controls like spacing of menu items in KDE is quite bad.” I don’t remember this. I suspect that KDE has an option for this. XFCE definately does not do this…but I can comment that X.Orgs Desktop Naming Specification is an improvement on anything Apple or Microsoft has.

          “3. Windows are too bland, look how OS X windows have a small shadow and have a clean crisp look.” What do you mean, clearly you should try beryl if you need the glamour, and even without that windows are anything but bland.

          “4. Consistency is not so good in various applications. For example in windows almost all applications have F5 to refresh the contents. Not so in Linux UIs.” I agree that consistency is not 100% in Linux quite the reverse, but I would only say that there is consistency on Microsoft’s OS with Microsoft’s Apps…and then I’m not so sure. Obscure example BTW.

          “Ofcourse above all this, the lack of application is a deal killer for me. In linux you get substandard replacements for well known applications like:”. I thought you would focus on games or CAD or photoshop, or DVD authoring, of which you could argue that WINE is only a partial solution. but no you chose.

          “1. Evolution is a bad clone of outlook express and outlook. Try reading newsgroups in it and see how miserably it fails.” I’ll do three points evolution is one of many solutions. Outlook express should be burnt. Outlook is £300…but the odd thing is you mention *newsgroups* all of these products suck at newsgroups. There are some wonderful dedicated newsgroup readers available on the Microsoft platform, and Microsoft make none of them.

          “2. gaim is a replacemnet for more powerful messenger clients like yahoo messenger and MSN messenger. Yes it is one for all but it is substandard to either one of those. ” regardless that gaim is only one of *many* messenger programs, or that it handle multiple chat protocols. What do you mean?

          “3. open office is a memory hog and is kind of a bad copy of MS office. The UI is bulky too.” This is kind of ironic on an article that describes Vista needing 2GB of memory. I can use Linux+X+XFCE+Openoffice in a quarter of that.

          “4. Not even one kick ass IDE like visual studio. I know you will say kdevelop is better but again kdevelop copied visual studio but couldn’t do such a good job. ”

          http://www.eclipse.org/

          “5. I feel the graphical debugger on widnows like windbg and visual studio debugger are little bit better than gdb. Though i can use ddd but it is quite slow then. Also setting up kernel debugging in windows is a piece of cake, not so much on Linux. ” You fix bugs in the windows kernel. errrm no you don’t.

          “6. There is no replacement for softice (the best debugger IMHO) on Linux.” Linux has debuggers.

          “7. No standandard development kits like DDK on Windows and no proper documentation like MSDN. ” It not only has standard development kits but lots like SDL etc etc, which has has lots of books published etc etc and is one of many…and is cross platform.

          “So all in all from power user and developer point of view. i think Windows and OSX are far ahead of Linux. And again it is my opinion so feel free to disagree.” I suspect you are neither.

          • 2007-01-06 11:11 pm
            sappyvcv

            Eclipse? Seriously? Have you guys even used eclipse? Yikes.

          • 2007-01-07 2:43 am
            mlopes

            I do serious development with Eclipse (J2EE, GWT, AWT/Swing, SWT, Java RMI, Eclipse RCP, etc and etc..) and Visual Studio .NET 2005 (ASP.NET, C# Windows.Forms applications, Mobile applications, etc..) and trust me, apart from the debugging facilities an the excellent GUI Windows.Forms designer VS.NET 2005 provides, Eclipse outperforms Visual Studio.NET in every other possible way.

            To support my claim here’s some examples

            – Better refactoring tools

            – Loads quicker and requires less RAM

            – Has an excellent Quickfix (Ctrl + 1) with more options than VS’s one

            – Integrated CVS (SVN available via free plugin. VS only comes with control version capabilities on the TeamShare version)

            – Provides Eclipse RCP, an excellent framework for building your applications that provides a lot of interesting functionalities

            – Integrated unit testing tools

            – Free functional tests, code coverture, etc..

            – Free/Open Source Software so it’s easily modifiable to fit your needs and it can be used for developing commercial tools, contrary to VS.NET 2005 Express Edition

            – Multiplataform: it works on Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, insert-your-favorite-so-here

            – It has tools for every possible language other than Java

            – It costs 0€ (insert your currency here)

            So, unless you factually prove me otherwise, you haven’t used Eclipse at all and you’ve just thrown a Paul-Thurrott-like sentence.

          • 2007-01-07 3:01 am
            fsckit

            – Loads quicker and requires less RAM

            Wow, you know your software has issues when it gets outperformed by a huge honkin java beast.

          • 2007-01-07 3:13 am
            CrazyDude0

            You actually prove me right:)

            – Better refactoring tools

            Do you mean code refactoring. I thought a better programmer always write good well factored code. I don’t know if this is an advantage or if it promotes bad programmer:)

            – Loads quicker and requires less RAM

            That is subjective. I think VS.NET starts faster and uses less RAM and is more responsive on things like intellisense.

            – Has an excellent Quickfix (Ctrl + 1) with more options than VS’s one

            – Integrated CVS (SVN available via free plugin. VS only comes with control version capabilities on the TeamShare version)

            VS.NET has these plugins as well.

            – Provides Eclipse RCP, an excellent framework for building your applications that provides a lot of interesting functionalities

            Give some information, now you are doing the same thing, it is good but no reason why ;)

            – Integrated unit testing tools

            – Free functional tests, code coverture, etc..

            When you say things like Integrated unit testing tools – i can only smile. Wow how about automated unit testings or more like neural network based automated integrated unit testing. OSS software are historically full of feature creep. And has tons of useless features and this is one of them.

            – Free/Open Source Software so it’s easily modifiable to fit your needs and it can be used for developing commercial tools, contrary to VS.NET 2005 Express Edition

            – Multiplataform: it works on Solaris, Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, insert-your-favorite-so-here

            – It has tools for every possible language other than Java

            – It costs 0€ (insert your currency here)

            I don’t care for multiplatform because i mostly work on windows.

            For your points on 0 cost or OSS, i don’t give a rat’s ass. I don’t care for OSS or free because i am not a cheapo. I will spend money on useful software rather than using cheap clones.

            Beside that:

            The form designer, coolest debugging and features like code completion and intellisense are the ones that make VS so special.

            And eclipse is anyways mostly for lame-ass Java developers who are unable to manage memory and needs garbage collector ahh tsk tsk.

          • 2007-01-07 3:21 am
            mlopes

            Do you mean code refactoring. I thought a better programmer always write good well factored code. I don’t know if this is an advantage or if it promotes bad programmer:)

            I was going to answer you but you had the unfortunate to start by saying that. I rest my case.

          • 2007-01-07 6:03 am
            Wrawrat

            And eclipse is anyways mostly for lame-ass Java developers who are unable to manage memory and needs garbage collector ahh tsk tsk.

            Like all those C# developers happily churning managed code with VS.NET? At least the lame-ass Java code can run on multiple OSes.

            Honestly, I believe it’s a matter of preference. While my last experience with Visual Studio was almost a decade ago, some of my friends using VS.NET were quite impressed by their Eclipse tryout. Personally, I found its debugger quite powerful for my needs. While not coming with the software itself, the Visual Editor for designing interfaces was nice, too. Didn’t had performance issues with it, but I have a fairly recent machine at home (Intel Core Duo E6300, 1GB RAM DDR2-800).

            Anyway, I’m not much into desktop application development… I suppose VS.NET must be nice if MS Windows is the only thing you care about, because of the tight integration. That said, computing goes beyond MS (and desktop experience).

            On Windows Vista: 1GB of RAM to merely run an OS is just ridiculous, no matter what are the new features or the low price of memory. That is even scarier when you consider it was under development for about 5 years by an army of developers…

            I will probably give it a try because of my interest in OSes (why wouldn’t I give it a try when it’s pratically free via MSDNAA?), but I am sincerly interested in its successor, hoping the chief developers realised the complete failure (more than half of the features were held back) because of overengineering, backward compatibility and probably poor management.

            Edited 2007-01-07 06:04

          • 2007-01-08 2:34 am
            Gunderwo

            I develop in both VS.NET and in Eclipse and both are quite good IDE’s. BUt I can’t help but say that some of CrazyDude0’s comments lead me to believe that he’s a pretty poor programmer.

            “Do you mean code refactoring. I thought a better programmer always write good well factored code. I don’t know if this is an advantage or if it promotes bad programmer:)”

            I have yet to meet a developer who writes perfect code the first time, everytime. More likely when developing any signifigant piece of code a coder will find themselves factoring out redundant pieces of code into functions, renaming variables and functions as the coders understanding of the problem increases. Or possibly even change style attributes like indentation, capitaliztion, spacing etc… Eclipse allows you to easlily do all these things.

            “When you say things like Integrated unit testing tools – i can only smile. Wow how about automated unit testings or more like neural network based automated integrated unit testing. OSS software are historically full of feature creep. And has tons of useless features and this is one of them. ”

            Any person who doesn’t understand the importance of testing code, and unit tests allow for a great deal of control, flexibility and automation, is not fit to call them selves anything more than an amateurish hack. Unit testing does so much in allowing a good developer to verify that thier codebase functions as it’s required to by TESTING that each requirement functions as it is supposed to. THink of how much time this saves in tracking down a bug when one developer changes something that breaks something else that isn’t visibly apparent. There’s a pretty good chance that if you have a unit test written to test each requirement of the software the bug won’t make it into a production product.

            Greg

          • 2007-01-07 5:47 am
            stestagg

            I’ve used Eclipse (although not for about 2 years), here’s why I quickly stopped using it:

            – It’s a java-based editor

            – It keeps a big database of your project’s definitions in memory.

            – It’s java based.

            – Workspaces

            – Did I mention that it’s a text-editor based on java?

            So this adds up to an environment that is big to download (including the JVM), slow to load, sluggish during use, and needs about 4Gb (well…maybe 1Gb) of ram to run without lots of paging.

            Other that that, it’s excellent.

          • 2007-01-07 5:56 am
            ma_d

            You’re exaggerating. Eclipse needs about 1GB of RAM to run well and it needs a processor from the last 2 years. If you want it to be usable you need about 1GB of RAM and a processor in the last 4 years (I’ve run it on that, and it’s quite usable).

            I’ve never met an IDE I liked, but Eclipse makes me the least angry.

            And the really cool part about Eclipse is that it not only works with CVS/SVN, but it does some “magic” that keeps your projects from breaking when you change project files. I don’t know if VS2k5 does this or not if you use source safe.

            Their use of Java is probably the single most important reason why it works as well on my Linux box as it does on my mac and on my windows machine… Whatever you think about Java or Sun’s implementation (it’s slow), it’s well supported on the mainline platforms; very well supported. Now I just wish I knew of a good compiler for C# that compiled to jvm code!

            Visual Studio was nothing but a nightmare the last time I used it. But then again, IDE’s typically make me miss emacs and make.

          • 2007-01-07 12:39 am
            GreatBunzinni

            I find it funny that the linux trolls can only resort to petty arguments like “the UI controls spacing sucks” or “the windows look so bland” knowing that every major linux desktop environment are fully tweakable. To make matters worse, it sounds even more pathetic knowing what those linux trolls are claiming is the best UI out there: XP’s FisherPrice brainfart with that hideous startup menu and Vista’s famous problematic, non-coherent, idiotic UI.

            To make matters even worse, XP and Vista can’t even be compared to KDE in terms of usability. With KDE I can customize how a particular window behaves, their skin, if it stays always on top, in which desktop it is rendered, etc… I can even assign global shortcuts to perform individual tasks on individual applications. How do you do that on windows? In windows you can’t even scroll a window without it having the focus.

            And another thing that is particularly pathetic is trying to attack Linux by complaining about software like OpenOffice. For your information, OpenOffice is also a Windows application. So if you try to use it as a tool to attack the operating system it runs on then your complaints are also targeted towards windows. Moreover, windows makes the user experience worse due to the fact that it’s UI is so bland and a feature desert, unlike any relevant DE that runs on Linux.

          • 2007-01-07 9:26 pm
            superstoned

            well said. the basic desktop experience in linux is way better than in XP or Vista, or even Mac OS X. it can be rough sometimes, but windows can’t even do the basics (like the scrolling you mention). and i don’t mention the tedious software management (or absence thereof) in windows.

            Sure, linux lacks some apps, or some functionality in them. but it’s seriously not the basics… i use wine for MS Office (tough for personal use Koffice is good enough – you just sometimes can’t do certain stuff, and MS Office isn’t bad). and i could imagine someone would want to use eg photoshop or stuff like that. but that’s doable, wine can help you.

            i think the point here is NOT how mature the desktop is, and not even how mature the applications are. it’s just that linux is different. esp as a poweruser, having to relearn a lot about linux is a serious reason not to use it. you often think ‘this is worse, windows did this better’. but you fail to realise the linux way might be better in many ways, and what bothers you is that it’s different! this goes for the filesystem layout, and the way of installing and managing software, for example.

            really, it’s harder to have to use windows when you’re used to a comfortable desktop like KDE, than the opposite. i know, after using linux for years, i was forced (job…) to use windows. man, now i can feel how a windows user feels in KDE… you miss so much things which you’re used to. it takes serious time to get accustomed to a new desktop, more than a few hours of playing with a livecd.

          • 2007-01-07 12:37 pm
            wirespot

            This is kind of ironic on an article that describes Vista needing 2GB of memory. I can use Linux+X+XFCE+Openoffice in a quarter of that.

            You can do that in less than a quarter, in 256 MB. I did and still do, and so do others, on certain computers at work. And I can also add Opera, Skype, Gaim and several open file managers and it will still work well. And I really mean well, not the kind of “well” Microsoft means when they claim 800 MHz and 512 RAM for Vista.

          • 2007-01-07 9:52 pm
            como

            And I can also add Opera, Skype, Gaim and several open file managers and it will still work well. And I really mean well, not the kind of “well” Microsoft means when they claim 800 MHz and 512 RAM for Vista.

            I run Vista on 1.4GHz Celeron M with 512MB. I have IE, Skype, Live Messenger, and they all run well. It seems to me that Microsoft is on point to say you can do it with just 512MB. And no, it’s not painful.

        • 2007-01-06 11:42 pm
          Ford Prefect

          Just your first two points, it’s getting dirty afterwards anyway:

          1. Fonts sucks, that is my biggest complaint. Even after copying MS fonts, it still doesn’t bod well.

          Lol, sure! Even fonts are copied from MS. Are you nuts? libfreetype2 is the best font renderer out there, it is far better than Windows font rendering, and Mac anyway, for example subpixel rendering has much less color bleed then under windows.

          Talking about fonts, there are many very good free fonts out there. You don’t need any MS font to have a nice look.

          (Windows Vista comes with a font rendering shader on the GPU, that’s interesting!)

          2. Spacing of various UI controls like spacing of menu items in KDE is quite bad.

          I can only laugh at that one, as spacing of UI widgets is the biggest problem of Windows, as there is no auto-arrangement. Did you ever try localized versions of programs?

          Edited 2007-01-06 23:44

          • 2007-01-07 12:11 am
            sappyvcv

            Clear Type is easily better than any of the font rendering Linux or Mac has. Much more crisp and easier to read fonts.

          • 2007-01-07 12:45 am
            Ford Prefect

            show me a comparison. All I’ve seen on windows was definitely less crispy, and wouldn’t be usable to me.

          • 2007-01-07 12:53 am
            sappyvcv

            Well first of all, if I were to show you comparisons, one may look bad on your monitor. You HAVE to tweak font settings based on your monitor for them to look optimal.

            But here’s a comparison, which may prove to be useless to you:

            http://weakmind.org/upload/files/old/osnews_ct.png

            http://weakmind.org/upload/files/old/osnews_ft.png

            On my LCD, ClearType (ct) looks much more crisp and smoother, whereas FreeType’s (ft) edges still look kind of rough, and certain characters have bad font hinting.

            That was using the optimal sub-pixel rendering settings for both.

          • 2007-01-07 1:03 am
            cyclops

            I loved the screenshots but I checked the dates

            https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=416463&grou…

            https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=334544

            Changelogs since that date

            even with this I’m not 100% sure of the difference

          • 2007-01-07 1:20 am
            sappyvcv

            Yeah it has been almost 2 years or so I think. Unfortunately I’m not running Linux right now so I can’t do a comparison.

            However, looking at the desktop screenshot thread last week, the fonts always looked pretty bad to me. Especially on web pages, they looked like they didn’t fit right.

          • 2007-01-07 2:59 am
            cyclops

            From this article.

            http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

            I’ve picked these two pictures.

            http://gentoo-wiki.com/images/8/8f/Xorg-fonts-lcd.png

            http://gentoo-wiki.com/images/a/a5/Xorg-fonts-windows.png

            I use gentoo so I have my fonts set-up like the example. It does not mean that in every linux distribution has font hinting done right.

            Things in linux improve all the time. Look at the proposed changes for Xorg 7.3 for how they plan to get rid of the config file.

            Although looking into this point I saw this.

            http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

            now thats interesting.

            Edited 2007-01-07 03:12

          • 2007-01-07 1:45 am
            archiesteel

            Remove the hinting, and you’ll get nicer-looking fonts. As for fuzziness, as long as you have 1280×1024 or more that won’t be an issue. Heck, it’s not even an issue on my 1280×768 LCD screen.

          • 2007-01-07 2:20 am
            sappyvcv

            No fuzziness actually. I only find fuzziness an issue with OSX.

          • 2007-01-07 2:21 am
            Ford Prefect

            Well, I see ct can get some points in your screenshots (although old), but there are exactly the drawbacks to be seen I don’t like about CT! (yes I look at it with a LCD and it fits my pixel arrangement)

            Sorry, I’m too lazy at 3 am to post a screenshot now…

          • 2007-01-07 2:23 am
            sappyvcv

            It’s more than pixel arrangement and using an LCD though. You have to have the weight right too or it’ll look too thin (where the hinting looks bad) or too thick (where it looks fuzzy).

          • 2007-01-07 1:44 pm
            B. Janssen

            sappyvcv: But here’s a comparison, which may prove to be useless to you:

            http://weakmind.org/upload/files/old/osnews_ct.png

  • 2007-01-07 2:13 pm
    sappyvcv

    I meant to say both may look bad, oops.

    Again, depends on your monitor.

  • 2007-01-07 12:45 am
    GreatBunzinni

    I beg to differ. I find XP’s default fonts too jagged and submitted to poor antialias, which it makes them sport a weird blur.

    On the other hand, linux fonts are very crisp and have a very smooth finishing. They are a pleasure to look at.

    So please take a look at the calendar. We aren’t in 1996 anymore. You have to get up to speed on your pet linux FUD because it is affecting your trolling…

  • 2007-01-07 12:54 am
    sappyvcv

    Sorry kid, no FUD here.

    See http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=16880&comment_id=199145

  • 2007-01-07 1:43 am
    archiesteel

    Clear Type is easily better than any of the font rendering Linux or Mac has. Much more crisp and easier to read fonts.

    I disagree. As soon as you have medium-to-high resolution (i.e. 1280×1024 and up), I find both libfreetype on Linux and the OSX font renderers to produce much better results than Clear Type (at least on WinXP…I can’t talk for Vista, but unless they’ve overhauled the engine it should pretty much be the same thing).

    To have nice-looking fonts with libfreetype with KDE, make sure you turn AA on but disable hinting. Much nicer than Clear Type.

  • 2007-01-07 2:20 am
    sappyvcv

    I use 1600×1200 normally. I find ft better with hinting off than with hinting on, but ClearType much better than FT with hinting off. The hinting in ft is terrible if you ask me, but I find hinting important to making smaller fonts crisp.

  • 2007-01-07 4:04 am
    archiesteel

    At 1600×1200, you don’t need hinting to make fonts crisp except for very small fonts.

    At such resolutions, you get much better glyph shapes by turning hinting off (i.e. the letter shapes look much more like their printed versions if you turn the hinting off). Since it’s quite easy to control font sizes for the UI with Linux (more than for WinXP, and which much greater granularity), I find that this makes for a much more attractive – and readable – desktop.

    Personally, I find that Clear Type fonts don’t look like their printed versions much, and that irritates me. As I said, from 1280×1024 on up, AA freetype fonts without hinting are clean and highly readable. But I guess it does come down to a manner of personal preference. You prefer ClearType fonts, and I believe that freetype/OS X solutions are better.

    I will say, however, that the best solution would be to enable AA for all fonts, but only use hinting on very small font sizes (because those are sometimes blurry).

    Edited 2007-01-07 04:06

  • 2007-01-07 9:28 am
    evangs

    As a Mac user, I have to disagree. Freetype does do fonts better than Mac OS X and Cleartype (lol). With sub-pixel rendering, the fonts on GNOME look absolutely gorgeous and are better than what I see on the Mac.

  • 2007-01-07 12:02 pm
    wirespot

    Clear Type is easily better than any of the font rendering Linux or Mac has. Much more crisp and easier to read fonts.

    Please. Are you serious? The first (and only) time I ever experienced subpixel bleeding was on Windows XP. Never happened on Mac or Linux.

    Plus, the configuration options on ClearType (even with the powertool tweaker) are a joke, and the default choices in font rendering, AA, hinting etc. suck. Compare that with the Gnome/KDE options. I won’t even mention editing your own fontconfig configuration, which allows you to fully control font rendering down to customizing all the above for certain font families or sizes.

  • 2007-01-07 2:11 pm
    sappyvcv

    It comes down to personal choice. I don’t experience “bleeding” when I have the right configuration.

  • 2007-01-07 12:12 am
    B. Janssen

    CrazyDude0:So all in all from power user and developer point of view, i think Windows and OSX are far ahead of Linux. And again it is my opinion so feel free to disagree.

    Thank you, i do.

    EDIT: Sorry, i should have written: I do, but i can’t really judge it, because all i see from MS Windows and Apple Mac OS X is the surface. That looks good and usable, but so does GNU/Linux, where i can look under the hood. So at least from the developer point of view, i can’t share your sentiment.

    Edited 2007-01-07 00:14

  • 2007-01-07 2:12 am
    phgt

    LINUX FONTS DO NOT SUCK. Only the applications that still use the old fonts look bad (the most important one being… Emacs!). I use Windows and Linux all day long, with Linux windows in Windows desktop using cygwin X-window, and the net result is that Linux fonts look better than Windows fonts. Sorry…

  • 2007-01-07 5:38 am
    stestagg

    This is not a rant, or a rebuttal, just my (long) attempt to address the points you raised.

    I may be wrong but it sounds like you haven’t tried a mainstream Linux distro for a year or so, things on the UI side in Linux have recently changed markedly.

    1. Fonts sucks, that is my biggest complaint. Even after copying MS fonts, it still doesn’t bod well.

    Fonts in linux are rendered different[sic]. But wether this is better or worse, is a matter of opinion, and what you’re used to. I think that true ft2-style resolution-independence in font-rendering is a good thing, especially with sub-pixel smoothing turned on. At first I preferred Windows font rendering, but now I greatly prefer Freetype.

    2. Spacing of various UI controls like spacing of menu items in KDE is quite bad.

    I definitely agree with you, but then I use Gnome, where things like the UI spacing and Icon-set don’t suck (Human theme)

    3. Windows are too bland, look how OS X windows have a small shadow and have a clean crisp look.

    I think that the Ubuntu Human theme does a good job at being crisp. Otherwise, we’re all waiting impatiently for Beryl(or other) to become stable and mainstream (Still too unstable for proper deployment). If you can’t wait, then try elive, Windows looks bland compared with.

    4. Consistency is not so good in various applications. For example in windows almost all applications have F5 to refresh the contents. Not so in Linux UIs.

    This used to be a big problem. However I think that nowadays, most common Linux apps have woken up to the idea of Usability. Also, in Windows, almost all Applications are written by Microsoft (no seriously), and a few big software houses. This makes consistency much easier.

    Ofcourse above all this, the lack of application is a deal killer for me. In linux you get substandard replacements for well known applications like:

    1. Evolution

    Wow. Evolution blows (admittedly I was trying it in VMWare on Windows so speed was an issue). However there’s always thunderbird which is a serious application.

    2. gaim

    Gaim is different from MSN Messenger or Yahoo. It doesn’t have all of the eye-candy of the latest MSN but it does have some pretty useful organisation features that MSN doesn’t (especially the friends-status-change-notification stuff).

    3. open office

    I definitely agree. although I believe that good things (related to speed, memory AND UI design) are going to happen with the 2.2 release.

    4. Not even one kick ass IDE like visual studio.

    eclipse? (if you’re a C/C++ person, try CDE for eclipse.)

    5. I feel the graphical debugger on widnows like windbg and visual studio debugger are little bit better than gdb. Though i can use ddd but it is quite slow then. Also setting up kernel debugging in windows is a piece of cake, not so much on Linux.

    6. There is no replacement for softice (the best debugger IMHO) on Linux.

    7. No standandard development kits like DDK on Windows and

    I wouldn’t know about these. I found GDB to be pretty similar (for me) to the Visual Studio Debugger, but then I wasn’t exactly stretching the feature-set of either Debugger.

    no proper documentation like MSDN.

    I don’t dispute this. But I often find it easier to find docs on Linux programming topics/libraries by using google than windows problems using MSDN. How many times have I searched for a function specification only to have to reject about 5 sets of Windows CE documentation before unearthing what I’m looking for.

    So to sum-up, I agree with some of your points, but i think that you: a) have been swayed by several typical Linux stereotypes, b) expect a successfull linux to be an exact clone of Windows, and c) haven’t used (for example) the latest Ubuntu or Fedora distros (enough to appreciate their new features).

    I, however, am probably in denial about the state of the Linux DE and should take off the rose-tinted flying-goggles and eject before the community crashes and burns ;) .

  • 2007-01-07 6:05 am
    ma_d

    Do you really believe that user experience in Linux or BSD is better than Windows?

    It was better for me ;) .

    I never had much problem with the fonts though, maybe I’m less picky?

    1. Definitely.

    2. Gaim is a replacement for ads in my opinion. I always liked IM for the ability to send people text messages, video was the last thing I wanted added on.

    3. Oh that just depends on the theme. Sure, there are some butt ugly themes for KDE and Gtk, but there are some rather nice ones too (although they are more bland than OS X).

    4. That’s because Unix guys hate IDE’s.

    5. You get proficient with gdb just like you do with a visual debugger, it’s a bit harder though. And C debugging, frankly, still sucks (especially wrt threading).

    6. Ok ;) .

    7. MSDN is the worst documentation I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. And there are proper docs, at least on Gtk related things, I’ve never failed to find quality documentation that concisely explains every element (functions, objects, constants) other than libgcrypt which was really verbose. MSDN gives you these awful descriptions of how to initialize every object in every language (obviously auto-generated) and then occasionally gives you great information and occasionally gives you nothing. It’s pretty typical actually, the documentation itself isn’t that bad; what makes it an egregious moral crime (exaggeration) is the way it’s presented: The website is so slow, clunky, and strangely organized! And the search engine is worthless, plus the structure of the content makes it hard for google to grok! At least with Java docs I can point google at it and get answers!

  • 2007-01-07 10:22 am
    hal2k1

    //Do you really believe that user experience in Linux or BSD is better than Windows? //

    Yes, I do.

    Linux, at least, won’t stop working on me for no good reason.

    http://news.com.com/2100-1016-6147259.html?tag=yt

    In the talkback on that article, as one poster says:

    “What else will suddenly stop working in Vista?”

    Apparently, the answer to this is, when the WGA spuriously decides your copy of Vista isn’t genuine, then most things will suddenly stop working on Vista.

    A great “user experience” all of this is going to be, **NOT**.

    ROFLMAO.

    • 2007-01-07 3:09 pm
      stestagg

      So what happens when Microsoft goes bust and the Authentication servers go down? Does every Vista install in the world die 6 moths later?? LOL.

    • 2007-01-07 11:15 pm
      como

      Linux, at least, won’t stop working on me for no good reason.

      http://news.com.com/2100-1016-6147259.html?tag=yt

      Man, you’re a troll! The article is about Vista RC1. It’s prerelease stuff. Suitability for any purpose is not guaranteed.

    • 2007-01-07 11:45 pm
      hal2k1

      //Man, you’re a troll! The article is about Vista RC1. It’s prerelease stuff. Suitability for any purpose is not guaranteed.//

      Not at all. I raise the question “what else will bomb out on you with Vista”? This is a very legitimate question. We have already seen one timebomb in Vista go off with the RC1 trial version.

      If the particular “stop Vista working” timebomb(s) that is discussed in the article here: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=148

      … is somehow triggered by a false positive, that will happily occur to you in the released version of Vista as well.

      The point is, Vista is chock full of “license checks” timebombs, and Vista will bomb out on you if it thinks any of your licenses are not valid.

      It will bomb out on you even if it is mistaken, and you do actually have a valid set of licenses.

      http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=142

      No troll. Just the facts.

      Edited 2007-01-07 23:59

  • 2007-01-08 8:58 am
    abraxas

    1. Fonts sucks, that is my biggest complaint. Even after copying MS fonts, it still doesn’t bod well.

    If that’s your biggest complaint then you haven’t used Linux for at least 3 years considering I have had the exact same font setup for the last 3+ years (on an LCD btw) and my fonts are superior to Windows. I use both Windows and Linux at work and I use Linux exclusively at home and my eyes hurt every time I have to read crappy Windows fonts. The font issues with Linux are far in the past now.

    2. Spacing of various UI controls like spacing of menu items in KDE is quite bad.

    I don’t have that problem. I use neither GNOME nor KDE on a regular basis but I haven’t had that problem in GNOME although I’ve experienced it with KDE in the past.

    3. Windows are too bland, look how OS X windows have a small shadow and have a clean crisp look.

    I think my setup is pretty crisp. If you want bling Linux has XGL/AIGLX, which takes much less hardware to render than Vista’s bloated 3D interface.

    4. Consistency is not so good in various applications. For example in windows almost all applications have F5 to refresh the contents. Not so in Linux UIs.

    I am sick of this feeble argument. GNOME is more consistent than Windows by far. A lot of Microsoft applications are completely inconsistent with each other, nevermind all the third party apps that are needed for general computer usage. Look at Media Player (multiple versions), Office (multiple versions), CMD, and IE7 to name a few.

    1. Evolution is a bad clone of outlook express and outlook. Try reading newsgroups in it and see how miserably it fails.

    First of all you should be using something like pan to read newsgroups, not evolution. Secondly, as a groupware application Evolution kicks Outlook’s ass. I think it’s probably the best application for Linux. If you feel like picking out random issues with mail clients how about Outlook’s inability to print preview HTML email.

    2. gaim is a replacemnet for more powerful messenger clients like yahoo messenger and MSN messenger. Yes it is one for all but it is substandard to either one of those.

    Gaim works on a diverse set of protocols. It also has many useful plugins like GPG encryption. It does lack some features like voice and video which is a negative for some people but those features are coming soon and lucky for me I don’t care for either of those features in an instant messaging client. SIP is better suited for voice and video communication.

    3. open office is a memory hog and is kind of a bad copy of MS office. The UI is bulky too.

    You must hate MS Office then because Open Office’s interface is slimmer than MS Office. Otherwise Open Office opens fairly quickly on any decent machine and is still usable on my 6 year old laptop with only 256 MB of memory.

    4. Not even one kick ass IDE like visual studio. I know you will say kdevelop is better but again kdevelop copied visual studio but couldn’t do such a good job.

    It’s been said a million times already but have you tried Eclipse?

    5. I feel the graphical debugger on widnows like windbg and visual studio debugger are little bit better than gdb. Though i can use ddd but it is quite slow then. Also setting up kernel debugging in windows is a piece of cake, not so much on Linux.

    6. There is no replacement for softice (the best debugger IMHO) on Linux.

    I don’t have an issue with debugging on Linux but I can see how a Windows user might not be satisfied. SoftICE was nice when I was on Windows but I forgot all about until now.

    7. No standandard development kits like DDK on Windows and no proper documentation like MSDN.

    http://www.freestandards.org/en/Developers

    It’s rather new but it’s a start. So far all your complaining most of it is either outdated, hypocritical (concerning windows’ own flaws), or distortions of the truth to exaggerate your points.

  • 2007-01-06 7:56 pm
    mlopes

    Apart from that, I think that one cannot truthfully make bold statements like “My operative system is better than yours!”. Unless you provide a clear set of metrics that can be factually determined for each operating system then it’s nothing more that a void statement. Moreover, those metrics are always related to your specific needs!

    Depending on my current needs, Mac OS X could fit best. On other occasions Linux is a wonderful choice. Windows, regardless of the motives behind it, is the correct choice for hardcore gamers which play a lot of DirectX games (and even those made over OpenGL that don’t have a native port yet).

    • 2007-01-06 8:05 pm
      CrazyDude0

      I think Windows is a good choice for both application and kernel developers as well. IMO windows is the best development platform as compared to *BSD or *NIX and i have done application and device driver development on Windows, Solaris and Linux.

      • 2007-01-07 2:26 am
        mlopes

        I think Windows is a good choice for both application and kernel developers as well. IMO windows is the best development platform as compared to *BSD or *NIX and i have done application and device driver development on Windows, Solaris and Linux.

        You’ve proved my point. Why? Because I think the opposite way. I’m a Software Engineer and for the kind of development I do I clearly prefer a *nix, being it Mac OS X, Linux or BSD (sometimes Linux due to the GNU userland tools, other times BSD/Darwin due to the BSD userland tools). I definitely need a decent CLI and installing cygwin on Windows is too much time-consuming. Another example: there’s no better tool IMHO (price/quality) for developing Ruby on Rails other than Textmate. It’s only available on Mac OS X.

        So, once again, it’s subject to the individual and its needs. If you develop over .NET then the best tools are only available on Windows. Hence, you can’t do such statements unless you provide a clear description of your needs. And yet again it’s a statement that may only be applicable to you. You’ve made the same mistake as Paul Thurrott did.

    • 2007-01-07 1:04 am
      WorknMan

      Apart from that, I think that one cannot truthfully make bold statements like “My operative system is better than yours!”. Unless you provide a clear set of metrics that can be factually determined for each operating system then it’s nothing more that a void statement. Moreover, those metrics are always related to your specific needs!

      Right. Some people will say their OS is better simply because of the software license attached to it. Not saying that this metric isn’t a valid one – it just depends on who you ask.

      As for Vista, I haven’t ran it yet, but other than security, I’m not sure how much it can be improved upon over XP + the best 3rd party apps out there. However, one thing I think can DEFINITELY be improved is the multitasking. For those using Vista, does the OS still grind to a halt when you put a CD or DVD in the drive, especially one that has CRC errors?

      • 2007-01-07 12:06 pm
        wirespot

        Some people will say their OS is better simply because of the software license attached to it.

        But think about it. If the license is the only thing that makes a difference, doesn’t it mean that everything else is at the very least comparable?

  • 2007-01-07 12:20 am
    kaiwai

    Paul is clearly only considering the other Microsoft’s operating systems as competition and ignores the rest. Linux and Mac OS X.

    I think another thing he failed to point out, how does one define ‘better’? I mean, sure, I find Windows better than Linux, but you could find Linux better than Windows – for different reasons as to why I find Windows great.

    The problem with Paul and reviewers is that they come from some sort of position of where by they think if they declare it as ‘the best’, it is there for applicable to all those who run a x86 PC – when in reality, we all have different needs and expectations from our systems, and there is not always a ‘one size fits all’ which can apply to a given situation.

    With that being said, however, I’m going to give SuSE 10.2 a try once my laptop comes back (mainboard replacement); I’d love FreeBSD to support the 3945abg chipset via the freely available wpi driver from OpenBSD, but its not looking very hopeful given the wireless maintainers on FreeBSD’s refusal to port it across.

    As for Windows Vista; it looks like a great operating system – I have to admit, I only really tested the post RC2 builds on my laptop (Toshiba Satellite A100, 1.73Ghz (Core Duo 2050), 1GB RAM, 80GIG Hard disk, 256MB GeForce Go 7300 graphics card, DVD-RAM burner etc), but given the experience and reliability of that trial, it was a pretty damn good operating system.

    Those with machines older than say 18moths to 2 years *might* have some difficulty, and more so for those who chose to ‘cheap it out’ with one of those cheap Intel graphics chipsets – hence my ‘axe to grind’ should be for Microsoft to be more honest and just say, “Windows Vista higher requirements; you’ll need more ram and a better graphics card’ then at least there won’t be a avalanche of reviews out there to bash Microsoft over its ‘optimistic system requirements’.

    Oh, and regarding Paul, didn’t I say, when beta 2 came out, and Paul did his ‘tirade’ on the direction of Windows Vista, I came out and said that this was all part of the fanboy charter; bash, bash, bash, then when released, praise and claim that the said company ‘pulled it off’ and ‘delivered a fabulous product!’

    • 2007-01-07 12:48 am
      cyclops

      “who chose to ‘cheap it out’ with one of those cheap Intel graphics chipsets”

      intel marketshare 40%, and runs beryl nicely.

      most popular desktop today on ebuyer

      * AMD Sempron 3200+ Processor

      * 512MB DDR2 Memory (Max 4GB)

      * 80GB Hard Drive SATA

      * DVD±RW (+R dual layer)

      * nVidia GeForce6100 with nForce 405 Graphics

      * Realtek ALC880 (7.1 Channels) Sound

      * Gigabyte (10/100/1000) Lan solution

      * Keyboard,Mouse

      * Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition

      most popular laptop

      * AMD Turion MK-36 2.0 GHz

      * 14.1″ WXGA TFT Display with Acer CrystalBrite

      * Onboard Graphics

      * 512MB DDR2 RAM

      * 60GB 5400RPM Hard Disk Drive

      * DVD SuperMulti drive

      * 802.11b/g Wireless

      * 5in1 Card Reader

      * WLAN

      * 6 cell battery

      * 2.4KG

      * WinXP Media Center Edition

      and Vista out in 3 weeks.

      • 2007-01-07 4:21 am
        kaiwai

        intel marketshare 40%, and runs beryl nicely.

        And beryl doesn’t have the same depth when it comes to feature vs. feature; compare what Beryl provides compared to Windows Vista; it is not a clear case of comparing like with like.

        • 2007-01-07 5:10 am
          cyclops

          “And beryl doesn’t have the same depth when it comes to feature vs. feature; compare what Beryl provides compared to Windows Vista; it is not a clear case of comparing like with like.”

          AIGLX+Beryl will work on less powerful GPU’s than the windows implementation. Feature-wise thats a killer feature especially when we are talking about laptops.

          Is it as stable/bugfree/works as well on ATI/NVidia it probably doesn’t, but then 3D(Sic) *is* Linux’s main Achilles heel.

          I would love to see a feature vs feature comparison. I suspect Beryl would wipe the floor with Vista’s implementation, simply due to its more plug-in nature. Although I’d be happy for you to point out otherwise.

          http://wiki.beryl-project.org/wiki/Template:Plugins_list

          Edited 2007-01-07 05:12

        • 2007-01-08 3:22 am
          kaiwai

          Again you completely neglect to address the issue I raised; all these ‘technologies’ do is off load special effects to the GPU – with Microsoft the WHOLE GUI, every ASPECT of the UI has been dumped onto the graphics card; the widgets, the effects, the whole damn lot.

          That isn’t the case for Linux, yes, there is Cairo but the OpenGL backend via Glitz isn’t complete yet, AIXGL/Beryl support is very immature and still in a state of beta/testing – hardly something I would deploy for those who require uptime and support.

          Until Xorg/OpenGL move to what KDrive is doing DRI + OpenGL with Xorg sitting ontop of the stack, we’ll continue to simply see ‘effects’ being pushed to the GPU rather than acheiveing the holy grail of everything, the whole GUI running on the GPU.

        • 2007-01-08 3:57 am
          hal2k1

          //Again you completely neglect to address the issue I raised; all these ‘technologies’ do is off load special effects to the GPU – with Microsoft the WHOLE GUI, every ASPECT of the UI has been dumped onto the graphics card; the widgets, the effects, the whole damn lot. //

          Wow! Really?

          And yet Vista is slower than XP on the same hardware, and/or Vista requires significantly more RAM than XP in order to achieve the same level of responsiveness. At the same time, you claim that Vista has rid itself of the GUI tasks by handing it all over to the GPU.

          Interesting.

          All that Vista DRM “shall we let this play?” checking and WGA “is it time to bomb out yet?” checking must take up a lot of CPU, hey?

          It isn’t cheap on CPU grunt in order to remove all that functionality from the end users, hey?

        • 2007-01-08 4:42 am
          kaiwai

          *kaiwai throws his hands on the air*

          Keep spouting crap then; obviously you have no intention of having a conversation that actually talks about the features or the technological issues behind why and how memory is allocated, the difference between the Windows and Linux implementations.

  • 2007-01-07 12:24 am
    Earl Colby pottinger

    What I want to know is how is it better?

    There is a lot to read so I may have missed it, but I don’t remember seeing any clearly stated improvement over other OSes out there.

    For example he calls the networking stack as ‘Best of Breed’, what does that mean in real improvements compared to others systems out there?

    Did I miss the performance charts since I just browsed the article?

    • 2007-01-07 12:50 am
      GreatBunzinni

      For example he calls the networking stack as ‘Best of Breed’, what does that mean in real improvements compared to others systems out there?

      Indeed that’s his fanboy marketing spirit running on red. How can anyone claim that something is “Best of Breed” since not only it hasn’t even started to get tested in the real world but also when it was launched it still was sporting security bugs which plagued XP.

    • 2007-01-07 12:51 am
      GreatBunzinni

      For example he calls the networking stack as ‘Best of Breed’, what does that mean in real improvements compared to others systems out there?

      Indeed that’s his fanboy marketing spirit running on red. How can anyone claim that something is “Best of Breed” since not only it hasn’t even started to get tested in the real world but also when it was launched it still was sporting security bugs which plagued XP.

  • 2007-01-07 3:26 am
    proforma

    Well, honestly it is not that hard to beat linux. I don’t care what their fanboys say.

    Linux is way over-hyped at this point, well unless you start using it.

  • 2007-01-06 5:39 pm
    netpython

    I stopped reading after seeing the feature matrix:

    Windows Update (can access Microsoft Update)

  • 2007-01-06 5:39 pm
    samdawson

    I’m actually wondering if those Ferrari laptops are really that good.

    I heard some people just gave theirs away.

  • 2007-01-06 5:39 pm
    Sphinx

    for the hundreds of millions of people who will move to Vista in the coming years, all that will really matter is that it’s a major improvement over XP.

    One of the saddest statements I’ve ever read.

    • 2007-01-06 6:23 pm
      sappyvcv

      You must live an awfully sheltered life. I’m sorry.

  • 2007-01-06 5:56 pm
    l0ne

    Better than Windows XP, or any other Windows? Sure! You finally have least privilege not just _present_ but _working_, got a fancy new UI and spiffy new features, you’re already lightyears ahead of XP.

    Better than the other OSs?

    Vista, Linux, OS X. Guess which of these OSs required disabling and re-enabling wireless networking every time I woke it from sleep? (A clue: NetworkManager does it correctly in Linux.)

    • 2007-01-08 12:24 am
      como

      Vista, Linux, OS X. Guess which of these OSs required disabling and re-enabling wireless networking every time I woke it from sleep? (A clue: NetworkManager does it correctly in Linux.)

      It must be Mac OS X then. ‘Cause Vista works just fine.

  • 2007-01-06 5:58 pm
    CapEnt

    “But for the hundreds of millions of people who will move to Vista in the coming years”

    Paul is day-dreaming… this is strange, last time who i checked, almost all computer on market today, mostly in developing countries, with a really fast growing marketing for new computers, does not meet even the minimal requeriments to run Vista even without aero, in developed countries i fail to see any trend about people wanting to replace their computers, some of then quite new, just to run Vista.

    • 2007-01-06 9:38 pm
      Ultimatebadass

      I’m curious… what computers on which market are unable to meet Vistas MINIMUM requirements?

      I’m from Poland, and as far as I know my country is not the wealthiest around – still, ANY PC you go out and buy here TODAY (or even a one you bought a year before) is able to meet Vista minimum requirements. Come on, were talking 800mhz with 512mb of ram here…

      … not that it makes any sense running Vista on that kind of hardware but still.

      • 2007-01-07 1:26 am
        Windows Sucks

        Please, you CAN NOT install vista on a PC that does not have ACPI. So most of the 800MHZ machine you mention will not run Vista at all.

        I have a P3 1GHZ machine but it does not have ACPI so when I tried to install the last vista beta it laughed at me.

        And even on my P4 Dell it runs in slow motion. I ran the stupid tool that tells you if your machine is vista compatible and it gave me a 1 back. The only thing that qualified for Vista was the P4 Processer. Not the video not the hard drive etc. All failed.

        • 2007-01-07 5:08 am
          n4cer

          Please, you CAN NOT install vista on a PC that does not have ACPI. So most of the 800MHZ machine you mention will not run Vista at all.

          You should get a better motherboard. My machines have had ACPI support going back to at least the P IIs I’ve had (and possibly a P 133). One of the machines I tested Vista on was an 800MHz Athlon with 768MB RAM and a GeForce 6200. The Athlon was replaced with a 1GHz Duron during the RC stages (CPU fan died on the Athlon 800), and is now running Vista Ultimate RTM.

          • 2007-01-07 1:20 pm
            Windows Sucks

            Well there is no use in getting a better motherboard for this old P3 when it can run any version of Linux, Windows XP and Windows 2000 just fine. It’s not worth it just to run Windows Vista.

            My point was that a lot of people will run into that problem. The machine in question is one of the low priced Dells that people pick up as gifts etc for the holidays. So I am quite sure other people will run into the same issue. Remember Microsoft it’s self didn’t even support ACPI till Windows 98 SE. And that was basic support. Same with Windows 2000. XP was the first MS os to fully support it. And now Vista requires it.

            Other OS’s like Linux semi support it, Free BSD just started supporting it in BSD 5.0. So even though you may have had ACPI in machines back to the P1 days, it really didn’t matter anyway cause your OS back then didn’t support it. Which is why a lot of hardware vendors didn’t include it.

            Anyway even on my P4 Dell, it runs Vista no problem, it’s just slow as hell (And that is without Aero)

  • 2007-01-06 6:03 pm
    JernejL

    “all that will really matter is that it’s a major improvement over XP. And it most certainly is that as well.”

    It depends a lot on what your definition of what an “improvement” is, and this article in my honest opinion smells and sounds just like Ballmer.

    DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS

    Edited 2007-01-06 18:04

  • 2007-01-06 6:11 pm
    fasted

    depends on the context in which you use that staement.

    If your saying that it is a better written than XP was, then definately. If your saying its better at the user interface level then I’d say your more used to Windows way of doing things. OsX was far easier to use in a shorter length of time, and more productive overall, to me. And being that Linux has come so far in such a short time, it’s now the easiest to use for me, but admittedly I use it the most.

    If your saying that it’s just plain old better all around then anything out there PERIOD, I’d say that’s your opinon based on the lack of using anything else. Or, as others have already pointed out, you just might be a fanboy.

    I can’t comment on it too much, as the ass time I’ve had on it was minimum, but the cost of the bloody thing, will keep me from ever owning it.

    This from a guy who once spent $4000cnd on a mac!!

  • 2007-01-06 6:13 pm
    Dias

    How Linux fanboy says that Paul is just a fanboy…

    I think that it’s quite obvious that Vista is the best OS at this moment, it’s just offer more that MacOS (Linux is just continuing to copy Win/Mac so I don’t consider it).

    • 2007-01-06 6:20 pm
      SlackerJack

      Sure, thats why in Vista the file dialog is very simlar to GNOME and they have only just started new features that GNOME/KDE have had for agers. How many features has Vista got that have been taken from the Mac?. Innovation for windows users, old news for Linux/Mac users.

      • 2007-01-06 6:54 pm
        CrazyDude0

        Sure, thats why in Vista the file dialog is very simlar to GNOME and they have only just started new features that GNOME/KDE have had for agers. How many features has Vista got that have been taken from the Mac?. Innovation for windows users, old news for Linux/Mac users.

        Did you ever think that KDE always copied windows UI? Something you should think today ok.

        And even if the dialog in Vista and GNOME looks similar what’s the deal. Some UI will end up being similar, i don’t see what u crying for.

        • 2007-01-06 11:01 pm
          fsckit

          Did you ever think that KDE always copied windows UI? Something you should think today ok.

          This wasn’t directed at me but I’ll answer for you. NO. Say it with me now KDE is/was a CDE ripoff. It had nothing to do with Windows whatsoever. Maybe you should get your facts straight before telling others what to think.

          Edited 2007-01-06 23:01

          • 2007-01-08 4:57 pm
            BluenoseJake

            KDE was a CDE ripoff, but in KDE2 and 3, they copied more features from Windows then anywhere else. Times change

  • 2007-01-06 6:16 pm
    SlackerJack

    Paul contradicts himself summing up the good and bed points

    >Bad: Like all Windows versions, Windows Vista is a memory hog, and >you should take Microsoft’s minimum RAM recommendations as the >comedy they are. You will want at least 1 GB of RAM to run Windows >Vista, and 2 GB is the sweet spot if you’re a heavy multitasker like >me, a gamer, or a frequent user of creativity applications. That said, >RAM is >cheap, so this isn’t the huge problem some will make it out >to be. But it is an inconvenience.

    And then says.

    >Good: Windows Vista performs as well or better than Windows XP on >identical, modern hardware. No, your Celeron M system isn’t going to >be a screamer. But let’s be honest here. It never was.

    No it does not since he said you need at least 1Gb of ram, XP will run with 256Mb. This is not a proper review, it’s a fanboy Windows peoples review.

    • 2007-01-06 6:27 pm
      sappyvcv

      What part of “Windows Vista performs as well or better than Windows XP on >identical, modern hardware.” did you not understand? 1GB or more = modern hardware. 256mb != modern hardware. Yes, Vista needs more up front, but the point is that when rnning on higher end hardware, it performs just as good or better than XP.

      Seriously, it’s not a complicated thing to understand. Yet I see people make the same mistake over and over.

      • 2007-01-06 8:03 pm
        SlackerJack

        Wrong, games will requirer more ram with Vista, so how can a game that requires 1Gb perform the same as on XP?. HL2 was slow on 768Mb ram in Vista, yet in XP it’s much better.

        Yes alot of “moden” computers come with 512Mb of ram as standard, so that shots down your point very fast.

        Edited 2007-01-06 20:08

        • 2007-01-06 8:08 pm
          sappyvcv

          Can you back any of these statements up?

          • 2007-01-06 8:10 pm
            SlackerJack

            Sure i can, I’ve used Vista and played HL2, and it’s painful loading with 512Mb ram, 768Mb is not that much better.

            Go for it, do the same and I’m using a A64 3700+ 1mb cashe.

          • 2007-01-06 10:18 pm
            sappyvcv

            You do realize that is most likely because the graphics drivers are still pretty new, right? They will definitely improve.

          • 2007-01-06 11:30 pm
            SlackerJack

            It’s got nothing to do with graphics drivers, loading HL2 with the ram I said is painfully slow. 512Mb Hl2 didnot load, I must have waited 2-3mins, with 768mb it was not much better and the game had real bad stutters thanks to Vista eating all the ram.

            Thats just HL2, there are other games that are alot more resource hungry.

          • 2007-01-07 12:05 am
            sappyvcv

            Yes, Vista requires more memory because of more up front overhead. Didn’t we already cover that? You *should* have at least a gig of memory. If not, get a different edition with some stuff disabled or disable it yourself.

          • 2007-01-07 1:08 am
            GreatBunzinni

            That’s rich. You are trying to claim that Vista, which needs 1GB of RAM to run, runs as smooth on the same hardware as XP, which needs 128MB to run. Then, when someone points it out to you that on the same hardware a game running under Vista loads painfully slow when compared to XP, what is your excuse? The graphics drivers are pretty new. What a retarded excuse is that?

            You are trying to run a game on an OS which, according to Microsoft, needs at least 1GB of RAM to run and the machine only has 512MB of RAM. Obviously it has nothing to do with graphics drivers or whatnot. The OS alone is a RAM hog and it is running on a resource-starved system (for Vista’s extremely bloated standards). What is there to misunderstand?

          • 2007-01-07 1:21 am
            sappyvcv

            No, you’re not paying attention. I said that when you run modern hardware (a gig or more), Vista will run as smooth as XP. 128mb and 256mb are not what modern systems have.

            What didn’t you understand?

          • 2007-01-07 6:09 am
            ma_d

            I’m sorry to butt in here but “smooth” is a pretty strange metric to me. By arguing over “smooth” all I’m understanding is that one of you thinks Vista runs so badly that you can see jagged jumps and jerks in the UI (as this would be a requirement for something to not be smooth).

            Non-smooth running would actually be unusable… Obviously Vista runs smooth, in this sense, because otherwise they’d never have been stupid enough to release it! Insecure you can make excuses for, but jumpy animations make for dust collectors on store shelves!

            I’m with sappyvcv here.

      • 2007-01-06 9:11 pm
        Clinton

        I believe the review accurately states that Vista runs about the same as XP if you run both on a high enough level of hardware. Of course, XP out performs Vista if you have older hardware.

        However, having done some comparisons, neither XP not Vista performs as well on any hardware as Linux does, so I’m not sure where Thurrott’s “better operating system than the competition” statement comes from; unless he is pulling a Microsoft and pretending that Windows is the only competition.

        NOTE: I realize there is more to compare than speed, but I didn’t feel like writing a novel to cover every last area of operating system design and implementation.

        • 2007-01-06 10:19 pm
          sappyvcv

          “However, having done some comparisons, neither XP not Vista performs as well on any hardware as Linux does,”

          I’ve had the opposite experience. Oh well, to each their own.

          • 2007-01-06 10:32 pm
            CrazyDude0

            same here. On my laptop, XP response time was much better than ubuntu 6.06. Now please don’t tell me to try another distro.

      • 2007-01-07 6:03 am
        stestagg

        It’s not complicated to understand, yet it’s also not true. I have a decent-ish (1GB DDR2, 2GB AMD AthlonXP, ATI 9600XT AGP gfx, SATA-300 HDD, etc..) machine that runs XP perfectly, it even manages SP2 without any trouble.

        I put Vista Business on it for 2 weeks and performance plummeted despite the 3.3 User Experence Rating (or whatever it’s called). The whole environment felt sluggish and at times, just crawled, not to mention the Hardware and software incompatibilies.

        Now, maybe an 8GB Ram 64bit system with a dedicated superfetch cache would be faster on Vista than XP but how many consumers will be buying one of those this year?

        <vista rant>

        Every time a UAC dialog came up, the desktop darkened (like the Ubuntu security dialogs) However, the screen briefly (for up to 1/2 a second) goes black untill it can turn-on the transparency, now in my experience, a screen unexpectedly going black is usually a sympton of a Kernel Panic. It was quite unnerving at times, and ruined the whole ‘aero’ experience.

        Zip decompression rate averaged 256 bytes/s. Try unzipping a 2Gb backup at those speeds!.

        </>

        • 2007-01-07 11:33 am
          sappyvcv

          Dude… graphics drivers and other immature drivers under the new framework. They’ll kill performance. Give it a little time.

          • 2007-01-07 12:15 pm
            wirespot

            Give it a little time.

            What do you mean, “give it time”? The finished product launches in 3 weeks. In my world, “finished” means finished. Yes, I know that in the software mega-corporate world it means “whatever state it happened to be in on the shipping date that marketing picked”. Doesn’t mean I, an informed computer user, will cut it any slack or “give it time”. When it’s ready, I’ll consider it, not a day before.

          • 2007-01-07 2:12 pm
            sappyvcv

            Uh, drivers have to mature. That goes for the linux world too you know.

          • 2007-01-07 1:37 pm
            stestagg

            i’m not sure how much effect graphics drivers have on (for example) enumerating directories in Explorer, or in decompressing Zip files.

    • 2007-01-06 6:28 pm
      eivind

      Paul contradicts himself summing up the good and bed points

      I disagree. What the reviewer is trying to say, is that Vista performs better than XP, as long as the computer meets the required specs.

      However I agree in that the article is heavily biased. In most ways it’s entirely worthless.

      Edit: sappyvcv just barely made it before me there.

      Edited 2007-01-06 18:30

  • 2007-01-06 6:19 pm
    SK8T

    yes,

    it’s an improvment of DRM and spyware-technologie by microsoft.

    What’s also new in vista?

    – IE7 (okay, you can get that in XP, too)

    – Windows Media Player 11 (okay, even that can you get in XP, too)

    – Aero (okay, but you have to buy at least Vista Home

    Premium)

    – new filesystem? oh no, I forgot…

    Ok let’s talk about more “practically” features:

    – window flip: wow now I can see my windows from the side!

    mh, I think there are no new featues anymore.

    So, welcome to a new era of DRM…

  • 2007-01-06 6:50 pm
    Adam Scheinberg

    Paul Thurott has been “honest” in the past, but did anyone, anywhere doubt that he would end up liking and recommending Vista RTM?

    • 2007-01-06 8:12 pm
      LobalSurgery

      Back in August 2006, Thurrott wrote the following: “We might call Windows Vista a train wreck for simplicity’s sake. But it’s getting better.”

      http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winvista_ready.asp

      In the next paragraph he answers his own question of “Is Windows Vista ready?” with “No. God, no.” He also mentions that he doesn’t care when it gets released.

      So for anyone who has ever read Thurrott in the past, it should be no surprise that, 5 months later, he’s performed a complete 180 degree turn and highly recommends it over any other OS. Par for the course.

      • 2007-01-06 8:18 pm
        CrazyDude0

        Because Vista was really improved in those 5 months. Specially between beta and RC build.

        • 2007-01-08 12:35 am
          como

          Exactly. As someone who used Vista Beta2, RC1, RC2 and now RTM, I can attest that during that course Vista went from “barely usable” to “better than XP in almost any usage scenario”.

  • 2007-01-06 7:05 pm
    Anonymous Penguin

    “Vista is a better operating system than the competition”

    And this written even before Leopard is released. He must be a clairvoyant.

    • 2007-01-06 11:36 pm
      Ford Prefect

      Sorry, I don’t agree with Thurrott, but neither with you.

      Leopard is not part of the competition. It is invited to join the competition later this year though!

      I can’t stand all those MS fanboys talking for years about their super-great new OS coming out … “soon”. Don’t do the same mistake.

      We will judge at time.

      But by the way, I personally think Vista is still not “best of the competition”.

      • 2007-01-07 12:05 am
        cyclops

        “Leopard is not part of the competition. It is invited to join the competition later this year though!”

        January 30th

  • 2007-01-06 7:13 pm
    macisaac

    again, for me, it’s the apps that matter. the OS should be relatively transparent from the user perspective doing what an OS is supposed to do, load and manage your applications. how exactly does vista do this in comparison to say, windows 2000 (which I’m typing this from)?

    is it faster? more stable? do the apps do something in vista they won’t do in 2k (or xp)?

    well as the first, all indications appear to be a solid _no_ what with the obscenely higher memory requirements and such. as to the second, 2k is pretty stable, don’t see how much it could improve there. as to the third, well for pre-vista apps, well no, for later, doubt it, other than MS apps, and even then they take a while to get aggressive about that (I can’t load ie7 or mediaplayer >9 for instance. not that I really care)

    as to all those other “features”, especially with MS having chopped down the list considerably over the years, they may be nice additions overall, but again, who cares? who other than hard core OS enthusiast like spending more than say 10% of their time directly interacting with the OS itself, as opposed to firing up their web browser, word processor, IM client, game, etc.?

    so the question remains, why? (especially at that price point) I know the answer from microsoft’s standpoint ($$$, which is fine, they are a business after all), but I don’t clearly see one from the user perspective. (I suspect after having migrating their OS line from tehe 9x line to the NT based line, which was indeed major with clear advantages to the user, this is Microsoft’s major hurdle. competing against itself.)

  • 2007-01-06 7:28 pm
    Tuishimi

    …and annoying at the same time, in a way he is right. Vista is miles ahead because the underlying base of code has been improved. The better your base is, the brighter your future is.

    • 2007-01-06 7:38 pm
      jakesdad

      if by “base” you mean distribution channel, then I would agree.

    • 2007-01-07 12:18 pm
      wirespot

      Vista is miles ahead because the underlying base of code has been improved. The better your base is, the brighter your future is.

      As long as Microsoft insists on keeping full backwards compatibility with software and API’s from ages ago, they’ll never truly revamp their OS’s base.

  • 2007-01-06 8:54 pm
    REM2000

    I knew the article was gonna be bias toward microsoft, however last year some of his work was at least a little level headed. However i had a feeling it was all heading to a uturn and crap comments such as

    It’s this “spontaneous smile” effect that I like so much about Windows Vista, and it stands in sharp contrast to the refined but stark and unfriendly world of Mac OS X

    The unfriendly world of Mac OS X, thats gotta be the biggest load of rubbish ive ever read from his site. Mac OS X has to be one of the most user friendly OS’s ive ever used, photos and other media are handled so well, movie editing, web browsing, working with documents including PDF’s is more straight forward on a mac. Ive used Windows since the beginning and it’s a great OS, but it’s no where near the “just works” method of the mac.

    To me Vista really just brings Microsoft up to date with Mac OS X and Linux, which are two os’s which are constantly evolving anyway.

    Expose provides me with a fast UI for better multitasking, Beryl provides with a visual method of multple desktops for better divsion of projects, where as using Vista RC was a very underwhelming experience.

    The only reason why i will be upgrading to Vista is for the instant search, using it on the Mac and on Ubuntu really helps me work alot faster with my computers, coming back to windows is a real chore, and yes i have tried all of the desktop search systems, Google, Microsoft Live, Windows search 2 and 3 and copernic, and they all zap memory, slow my computer down (not majorly but enough for me to notice) and just could not index quick enough, with many search results resulting in missing data (such as emails) when i knew they were on the system.

    MCE could have been it’s star attraction as no other os’s have the DVR quailities of MCE built in. However again i think that the supersite is looking through rose tanted glasses when calling it the best DVR, as it had one major weakness when comparing to other DVR’s. Your recorded programs cannot be cut or split, meaning that everything you record adverts and all will have to stay in your recordings unless you hack the windows and install some third party apps, not even movie maker touches MCE files. My set top Panasonic HDD recorder can cut out segments and split files, that is a DVR. I have used MCE 2004/05 for a couple of years, but ive finally given up with it’s poor quaility, unstable nature when recording (XP didn’t crash but the MCE Recording app would), and crappy DVR functions, this was a dedicated HP MCE PC which was used for nothing else but MCE.

    One thing comes to mind when talking about Vista is that instead of just listing it’s negative points, try and add some constructive criticism, some ideas on what could make Vista better. However the strange thing is i can’t, and i don’t know if this adds to the deflated feeling regarding the launch of Vista, that i can’t really think of anyway to make this an appealing upgrade instead of a mediocre release. Perhaps the one thing that could have saved vista,

  • 2007-01-06 9:00 pm
    Pelly

    As far as Vista being touted highly by some, I have reservations and will stick with Linux for my personal OS & productivity needs. Linux works great for my needs and using Linux has never placed me in the position where I ‘had’ to upgrade my system (or major components). I use XP only when I must – as in my job.

    If I ever decide upgrade one of my machines to Vista, it’ll be awhile for sure.

    Not to be too critical, but the past has shown that Microsoft’s OS products still need work (patches, security fixes, & hotfixes) following their release. In some cases, soon after release.

    • 2007-01-06 11:11 pm
      TaterSalad

      Not to be too critical, but the past has shown that Microsoft’s OS products still need work (patches, security fixes, & hotfixes) following their release. In some cases, soon after release.

      That has been every OS including linux which you praise so highly. I’ve installed a new distro of linux when it was released just to find out updates were already available for it. Choose your words carefully.

      • 2007-01-07 12:25 pm
        wirespot

        That has been every OS including linux which you praise so highly. I’ve installed a new distro of linux when it was released just to find out updates were already available for it.

        When comparing Linux to Windows in this respect, please consider the release cycle. Linux distro’s, kernels and apps all follow the good old advice: “release early, release often”. There’s a constant stream of releases and updates on a weekly basis. I don’t mean just security updates (which Microsoft does too, albeit much more poorly), I mean feature updates.

        Compare that with Microsoft which releases service packs or new versions considering solely their own marketing needs, not the needs of the user or the good of the software itself.

        In this context, which shows Linux updates as driven by necessity and Microsoft updates driven by marketing, yes, it is wondrous that a finished product from Microsoft would need so many updates so soon after release just to perform OK.

  • 2007-01-06 11:17 pm
    nedvis

    “But for the hundreds of millions of people who will move to Vista in the coming years…”

    Nothing against this statement.

    Some pople might want it (Vista), some can afford it, some cannot avoid it but this is what I think millions of people ( at least in Brasil) will run on their underpowerded machines:

    http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/english/index.html

    No DRM, no WGA no phoning home no…

    And I’m writing this post from my DreamLinux-Multimedia

    installed on Duron 850 MHz with 512 SDRAM.

    nedvis@dlux:uname -a

    Linux dlux 2.6.18.1-kanotix-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Nov 29 15:15:15 EST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

  • 2007-01-06 11:20 pm
    Phloptical

    Getting Thurrott to admit to anything negative about Microsoft is like getting George Bush to admit he invaded Iraq for the oil. Even while reviewing Vista Beta 2 he couldn’t bring himself to say that the release was a complete, and horrible, mistake.

    He might as well start off every review by saying…

    “This review has been brought to you by Microsoft, the developers of the best software in the world.”

    Guess you’d expect that coming from a place called Windows SuperSite.

  • 2007-01-07 12:05 am
    ctzielinski

    You’re going to be using Windows Vista. It’s just a question of time

    hell no i aint gonna use Vista, get real! not today, not tomorrow and not in the afterlife… speak for yourselfs please mr carott

    After all, I didn’t just spend the past five years of my life covering Windows Vista only to give up on the final review.

    did you said spending time? you mean wasting time… you wasted five years of your life reinstalling beta versions of an ancient NT kernel that is bloated with crappy themes, patches and clippy animations installed on top of it.

    How on earth did it take Microsoft 5 years to come up with this stuff?

    Did i mention the new Glue-ie oops i mean GUI that will seriously keep your cpu busy all the time even when you are not working on your computer, it’s kinda like SETI but without the benefits of the research that is done using your cpu cycles.

    Should you upgrade? Yes, you should

    yes downgrade your pc with Vista, it will get even slower than it already is, if your Ultimate version of Windows Vista get sluggish after working on it for a few months, (just like XP and every other version of windows does) then you can always turn stuff of, disable those fancy clippy animations, disable functionality that Microsoft did not canceled themselves already like WinFS.

    That will save you from reinstalling or even buying a new “Vista Ready” PC that you cannot afford because you already wasted too much money to get the Ultimate edition for an ultimate experience.

    But i have to admit, it’s actually a good thing the installing has become easier and quicker, those poor Admins will have less headaches reinstalling Vista then they had with XP, let’s hope they are not running celeron M’s….

    Edited 2007-01-07 00:06

  • 2007-01-07 12:38 am
    happycamper

    /* I have some very basic (ahem) advice: Do not purchase or use Windows Vista Home Basic. It’s that simple.*/

    why not?

    I only need the home basic edition. i only use windows to run a few programs that don’t run in BSD and linux. so i really don’t need to spend more for features i will never use.

    Edited 2007-01-07 00:48

    • 2007-01-07 6:18 am
      ma_d

      Then why would you buy Vista, just stick with XP for the next 3 years and buy Vista then if you still have the need… It’s not OS X, programs aren’t going to suddenly stop supporting the last version ;) .

      • 2007-01-07 1:47 pm
        happycamper

        /*Then why would you buy Vista, just stick with XP for the next 3 years and buy Vista then if you still have the need… It’s not OS X, programs aren’t going to suddenly stop supporting the last version ;) .*/

        I need to upgrade beause I’m using windows 2000. windows 2000 eol is near and slowly software companies will stop making programs that runs on windows 2000, becaues it’s not a mainstream OS anymore.

        Edited 2007-01-07 13:52

  • 2007-01-07 12:52 am
    walterbyrd

    These fanboy blog/ad articles are all alike. The say Vista is superior, but don’t say why. Ah well, if it gets them a free laptop from msft, I guess I can’t blame them.

    I dual boot Windows 2000 and Debian. I have no reason to use anything else. All of my software and hardware just work, everything is stable, secure, fast, and reliable.

    I defy anybody to tell me *specifically* what I would gain by “upgrading” to XP, much less Vista. And please: give me something specific: will my computer be easier for me to use? I sure don’t see how. I can tell you for certain that there is no hardware, or software, that I want to run, that I don’t already have.

    • 2007-01-07 3:57 am
      spikeb

      Debian! ;)

  • 2007-01-07 2:20 am
    driftwolf

    …that “OSNews” was actually a more independent, perhaps even filtered news site, rather than simply another Digg or Slashdot where any jackass can repost the well written but quite partisan and ill-informed “personal opinions” of Thurrott. All it makes me wonder is how much Microsoft is paying him to host his “independent blog”. What a laugh. In any other industry (except, perhaps, the car industry), shills like that would be brought up in court for illegal advertising. In the computer industry, nobody bats an eyelash.

    • 2007-01-07 6:36 am
      stestagg

      The ‘any jackass’ happens to be a well-respected member of the team of 2 people who provide the main content on this site.

      Anyone who visits a site called ‘Windows SuperSite’ and isn’t wary of Astroturfing really shouldn’t be in the computer business at all. If OSNews only stuck to provably unbiased news sources, there wouldn’t be any articles posted at all.

      Currently, the mix of article subjects that appear on the site shows that Tom and Eugenia are good at providing a balanced news-source. If you can’t hack this then pis… …go away.

      • 2007-01-07 11:13 pm
        GreatBunzinni

        If OSNews only stuck to provably unbiased news sources, there wouldn’t be any articles posted at all.

        So in the end the OSNews people have to decide what path they take. Will it be the path of reporting relevant news pertraining to operating systems or will it be the path of being just another mindless propaganda distributor that caters to marketing directors and their PR campaigns?

        Personally I find it very disturbing that the people running this site are very aware that what they are posting here is helping spread blatant propaganda and articles from astroturfing sources. So suddenly your suggestion to “pis… ” and “go away” seems rather reasonable.

        • 2007-01-07 11:41 pm
          stestagg

          Feel free to follow my suggestion. I appreciate the fact that I am able to read these articles for myself and make up my own mind about what to believe.

  • 2007-01-07 5:44 am
    ma_d

    Unlike rival computing platforms such as Linux and the Mac, there aren’t fanatical groups of Windows enthusiasts roaming the Internet and striking down non-believers with unnecessary religious zeal and bias. In fact, if you think about it, the closest we have to that scenario in the Windows world are guys like me, and I couldn’t care less if you choose not to run Windows. Instead, Windows guys tend to be more pragmatic than Linux and Mac fanatics. First, we’re not fanatics, and while I can’t speak for the rest of the community, I completely understand why someone might want to run Mac OS X, and I’d never ridicule them for making that choice.

    If it’s so obvious Mr. Thurrot then why did you waste a section of your article on it. Your statements don’t convince me that you believe them to be true.

    …And third, we’re positive (if not militantly so) that Windows is, in fact, superior to rival systems.

    I know it’s a joke but it does go against what you were saying earlier about not caring what other people choose… And who’s this new “we” anyway?

    Then halfway through he gets to the part where he actually reviews the product (in this section, other than that you just had to read through two sections of fluff (1,2) before you got to a review (3)).

    It looks like it gets pretty thorough in about section 5, which is good. The parts of his review that cover the proper subject matter seem very good, but the rest are horrid and should have been cut in the second draft…

    Jarring UI changes

    Windows Vista’s new Aero user interface is absolutely beautiful, but whenever you run a legacy application that’s not compatible (for whatever reason) with Aero, Vista performs the technical equivalent of a slap in the face, brutally and suddenly jerking your system out of Aero mode and into the uglier but more compatible Vista Basic graphical mode. I can’t imagine why this is necessary, nor do I understand why only that application can’t just run in the lower-end mode. The whole transition is poorly handled and, frankly, even a bit scary if you don’t expect it to happen. And why would you? I don’t recall Mac OS X’s Aqua UI ever giving up the ghost and display the OS 9 UI when something goes wrong. That type of thing will happen in Vista.

    I’m generally not big on UI, but this would probably be a deal breaker for me. And I find it _very_ irritating as a developer to think any application I wrote using windows forms would now _have_ to be updated to use wpf before it’d be usable on Vista.

    MS-DOS compat on XP isn’t nearly so jarring. I wonder if this is more of an ultimatum to developers than a real technical issue causing this.

    • 2007-01-07 6:28 am
      stestagg

      would now _have_ to be updated to use wpf

      I don’t think that is true. You just have to make sure that *certain* ‘unusual’ api calls aren’t made by your app, most legacy programs will run fine.

      I wonder if this is more of an ultimatum to developers than a real technical issue causing this.

      Nah. I think that it’s because the 3d acceleration of the windows non-client areas is pretty reliant on commandeering the whole GPU for render. If (for example) a hardware accelerated video application starts, the average graphics card can’t service both mplayer and windows for 2 separate pipelines.

      I guess they at Redmond felt it was safest to just turn off Aero at the first sign of trouble, rather than try to selectively disable features based on what APIs were called.

    • 2007-01-07 12:31 pm
      wirespot

      And to further comment on Thurrott’s statements:

      Unlike rival computing platforms such as Linux and the Mac, there aren’t fanatical groups of Windows enthusiasts roaming the Internet and striking down non-believers with unnecessary religious zeal and bias.

      Windows operating systems and Microsoft products in general are not exactly capable of inducing enthusiasm by any means. What is there to be a die-hard fan of? Overall quality? Stability? Features? Security? Respect for the user? Right.

      If I were him, I wouldn’t exactly brag about Windows not being able to produce fanatic hordes of followers. It says something about the product, deep down, at a subtle level.

      Edited 2007-01-07 12:33

  • 2007-01-07 10:02 am
    h3rman

    Good: (…) all that FUD you read about needing new hardware to run the Aero user interface is false. If you have a reasonably new PC (i.e. one that is less than two years old), Vista should run just fine (…).

    Bad: Like all Windows versions, Windows Vista is a memory hog (…). You will want at least 1 GB of RAM to run Windows Vista, and 2 GB is the sweet spot if you’re a heavy multitasker like me, a gamer, or a frequent user of creativity applications. That said, RAM is cheap, so this isn’t the huge problem some will make it out to be. But it is an inconvenience.

    After some close reading of these lines, I have a few comments.

    – RAM is “hardware” to must of us, Mr. Thurrott.

    – There are PCs younger than 2 years with only 256 MB or 512 MB of RAM. I’d say there are a huge lot of them.

    – So, can we really call a statement like “you need new hardware to run the Aero UI”, FUD?

    In any case, it’s irrelevant. Few will start using Vista by anything other than buying a new PC (leaving aside piracy).

    Thurrott knows this, so he quickly forgets all about the “RAM is cheap” thing that he just said.

    Should you upgrade? Yes, you should. I still prefer clean installs over upgrades, though Microsoft has made progress with refining the upgrade process, and of course you’re going to get the absolute best experience buying a new PC with Vista preinstalled.

    Translated: “Just don’t upgrade; buy”

    If your computer is more than two years old, you should upgrade to a Vista PC as soon as possible.

    As soon as #@€$&%! possible?

    Long live consumerism. :/

    PCs of more than two years old, even many PCs of more than five years old, are usually still perfect machines for the tasks most people need it to do. What is the guy talking about?

    • 2007-01-07 3:07 pm
      stestagg

      Also, hardware approaching 2 years old (I do a rolling-upgrade on mine so some components are quite old) could have serious problems with Vista, I suffered random reboots, BSODs, and other stability issues when using Vista, solely because of the extra presure that was being put on my (otherwise capable) system by all the Live-Search indexing and Aero stuff.

      Ubuntu with beryl on the other hand didn’t seem to put as much stress on the system.

      • 2007-01-07 4:20 pm
        ronaldst

        @stestagg

        Mine too does massive segfaults when using Kubuntu. Everything works fine in Vista RC2. Weird uh?

        • 2007-01-07 4:29 pm
          stestagg

          What I find interesting is that since switching back to XP, it has taken me 3 weeks and 1 bust 500W power supply to get my pre-Vista stability back.

  • 2007-01-07 1:29 pm
    celt

    I deploy FreeBSD on servers and on my personal workstations / laptops.

    I would challenge anyone to show me one task that your MS-Windows box does better and more securely than a UNIX based system. Windows is pathetic as an operating environment…it’s a resource hog, it’s bloated with features that aren’t used, it’s horrible and incompetent at memory and resource management and shouldn’t be used to toast your bread.

    It’s security track record was / is shameful. Half the applications MUST run with admin privs or they won’t work properly, i.e. AutoCAD and many Adobe products. Then you wonder why your network is overrun by chatty protocols from Windows boxes constantly puking all over the place.

    Do you realize a fully patched XP box is greater in megabytes size than the original install? Don’t believe me, look at you patch directory.

    Vista is no different folks, it’s lips painted on an even fatter pig. Now get back to work, the botmaster is calling while I cleanup all the spam you’re spewing on my mail server.

    • 2007-01-07 5:06 pm
      Gryzor

      I would challenge anyone to show me one task that your MS-Windows box does better and more securely than a UNIX based system.

      Don’t know about more securely, but for sure, any MS-Windows box will run Visual Studio much better than ANY unix box. And that means work for millions of VB (now VB.NET/C#) programmers out there.

      Luckily for some of us, there’s Parallels for Mac.

  • 2007-01-07 6:36 pm
    tobaccofarm

    Well Parrot claiming Vista is way ahead of the competition is equivalent to jim Alcer saying:”Look mom no virus scanner”.

  • 2007-01-08 3:47 am
    StychoKiller

    Every since windows 95, each new version of Windows has been progressively worse as far as keeping a PC up and running is concerned. I really feel for those of you out there that have to support more than one PC that’s running Windows — one is bad enough!

  • 2007-01-08 7:22 pm
    Darkelve

    For a moment my eyes blinked, like they sometimes do, and I Read “Is Windows Vista-ready?” o_O (instead of “Is Windows Vista ready?”).

    Not trying to make any statement here, just thought that was funny…

    Edit: or maybe it’s because of all these darn hardware companies promoting their hardware as ‘Vista-ready’… sigh.

    Edited 2007-01-08 19:27

  • 2007-01-08 7:49 pm
    stabilep

    One could argue that the main competition to Windows Vista is Windows XP. (My argument is based on end user OS’s since that is what Vista is targeted towards)

    According to Market Share 93.67% of computers run Windows.

    http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2

    Of the Window Machines Windows XP has the highest percentage about 91% of window computers run Windows XP.

    So of its market Microsofts biggest competitor to Windows Vista is Windows XP. In that respect Vista is a lot better then its primary competitor. It has to be because those people are the most likely people to upgrade to Vista. And Paul Thurrot is right in that respect. It doesn’t matter what this inux user says or what that Mac person says about Vista. That 85% of people running Windows XP will be running Vista eventually.

    All these arguments were the same ones people said before XP came out: It was ugly, it was Windows 2000 with a facelift, it was slow, it was buggy, it was incompatiable, whats wrong with Windows 98 or Windows 2000, blah blah blah. The same things were said. And int he end most people switched.

    Now of course on a site liek OSNEWS and Slashdot where most users there are linux users they are going to rip at anything remotely positive about Windows. It happens everytime there is an article written about Windows 100’s of linux users unite and rip it to shreds pointing out how obscure wierd different stuff that matter to like 3 people is super important to the end user and that Windows can’t do it so it therefore sucks.

    Linux is a great OS, Mac OSX is a great OS, Windows XP is a great OS, and Windows Vista will be a great OS. Why? Because they are perfect for the people who want to use it. Are you happy with Linux? If so then great why do you need to rip on Windows? Why is it only ok to say nice things about Linux and never a bad thign but no one can say nice things about Windows and can only say bad things? Please an Operating System is a tool not a religion and like any tool everything has a use even WebTV.

    Edited 2007-01-08 20:01

  • 2007-01-08 7:54 pm
    Darkelve

    I’m a Linux user, but I kind of agree with you, Stabilep.

    (well, maybe not about WebTV… lol :p)

    • 2007-01-08 8:12 pm
      stabilep

      Well I like Operating Systems. Just in general. I try and run at least Linux and Windows. And when OSX86 beta was out I used that. I found each has its good points and each has its bad points. Linux I like because its fun to tinker with and tweak and there are so many wierd and awesome projects out there for it. For Windows I love its media capabilities and the software that is available for it. Each one has its own use for me. I see no reason to hang people over their choices and for liking something that I may not agree with.

  • 2007-01-09 1:09 pm
    twenex

    Uh, drivers have to mature. That goes for the linux world too you know.

    Yes, and in the linux world, the kernel isn’t released until the drivers are mature.

  • 2007-01-09 1:16 pm
    twenex

    OK, I won’t – but that’s just the point. With Linux you have the choice. With Windows the choice you have is basically “Microsoft quality, no features, somehow still bloat,” “Microsoft quality, some features, more bloat,” “Microsoft quality, more features, yet more bloat” or “Microsoft quality, all the features known to mankind (and most not needed), one small step for Microsoft, one giant leap for bloatkind.”

    And please don’t anyone bother to tell me that Microsoft makes the best software in the known universe. It makes decent Office software, but (a) it’s more than most people will need and (b) I have it on good authority (i.e. the opinions of myself and/or those whose informed opinions on technology i respect) that the rest of their catalogue stinks.

    And I was using Microsoft software (MSS) just the day before yesterday and it was a relief to get back to software that actually works, so don’t bother trying to contradict me on the point of MSS sucking. I’ve used it.