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20 Reasons Why Vista Will Be Your Next OS


Scot

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Truely amazing how so many around here love to take the "plausable" and turn it into reality. The only changes to WGA were announced the other day. MS tuned WGA down and starting with the release of Vista and Windows server 200X next year, customers will be required to register their volume license keys (VLK) with Microsoft within 30 days of acquisition and report their license usage on a monthly basis. It's a very different system than what is in place today, sources said. "In the enterprise, there is no client activation. You get a master set of bits and a number of licenses. It's always been up to you and an external auditor to verify that you didn't deploy more copies than you had licensed," said one source familiar with the plan, who asked not to be named. "This is designed to formalize the process."

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Guest LilBambi

LOL! Yep, you know everyone will just be 'movin' on up' to Vista.Scot great job on both the articles you did on Vista! :thumbsup:As for features, etc. and looks, it's the best Microsoft has ever done! It's a beautiful OS to be sure.Even though I will not be buying it, there will be more than enough people buying it with new computers, and as retail to make it worth Microsoft's while.At least those who are not familiar with HDCP and what that would mean to any fair use. And as more and more hardware and software takes advantage of HDCP enabling features in Vista.Hope you all enjoy it! :(

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Truely amazing how so many around here love to take the "plausable" and turn it into reality.
For someone with a vast knowledge of Microsoft and its history, I'd expect you to know a little more about what Microsoft is likely to do and what they are unlikely to do, based on that same history.Also notice the question mark in my post. It implies that, indeed, it is plausable, not a guaranteed fact. Edited by epp_b
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I love it and have never even had a (real)problem either Build 5308 or Vista Beta 2 Build 5384. It will not recognize my printer but that is no big deal at this point. Firefox runs even faster on it. :( I definitely will get it when it becomes available. I am not sure of the flavor yet.

Edited by Gary
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I love it and have never even had a (real)problem either Build 5308 or Vista Beta 2 Build 5384. It will not recognize my printer but that is no big deal at this point. Firefox runs even faster on it. thumbsup.gif I definitely will get it when it becomes available. I am not sure of the flavor yet.
Well, that's one way to sell your soul to the RIAAs and MPAAs of the world. Edited by epp_b
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Well, that's one way to sell your soul to the RIAAs MPAAs of the world.
Well, that's one way to sell your soul to the RIAAs MPAAs of the world.
Question.gif Question.gif Edited by Gary
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LilBambi has some informative blog entries on how Microsoft is selling out to the content industries with Vista:http://www.bambismusings.com/index.php?s=vista&submit=SearchSpecifically, make sure you read:http://www.bambismusings.com/?p=407
Microsoft like any software company will do what it has to do to protect piracy of it's products. As far as The RIAA, you do not have to turn on Windows Media 11. One can use other players.You can't fight City Hall. If I spent billions on a product, I would want to protect it as well from piracy. This is a major industrt in China and other countries. WGA is being used on Xp right now so I see it as no big deal unless your rumming illegal software. :( Edited by Gary
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LilBambi, I just read your blog about the OPM stuff.First, one thing I would like to correct because it may have come from me:You CAN run Vista in the normal Administrator mode. I found out from Microsoft how to do it, and I will be publishing that in the next newsletter. It's easy to do, once you know what Vista expects. There are also Registry hacks that accomplish it. I updated my first 20 Things You Won't Like About Vista beta 2 story with a link to that hack. But that's also obsolete. I don't have space in that story to explain how to do this, so I'm publishing it in another story -- near future.About the OPM stuff, I agree there are some surprising things in there. Like monitors that won't display things because you don't have rights to them.If that becomes something prevalent, you will see me and many others writing about it. I will give up Windows entirely and buy all Macs (or whatever) if that comes to pass in any meangingful way. But a lot of things like that have been initiated before in the computer industy, and many of them never really take off. So I think we should suspend our disbelief until reality sets in.And I'm not saying that it's impossible for the computer industry to go tilt about something. They might do it.But this is the U.S., where we believe we have certain rights. And one of those is to do what we want to do with our own stuff, without Big Brother telling us what we can and cannot do. Because of that ... I think the free market will take care of this consumer-oriented DRM stuff. It's just not good business. Of course, the recording industries have been practicing bad business for over 50 years. But this is a little different; this is the age of instant Internet publishing. You won't be alone in hating the companies that make a mistake and cross their own customers -- if they do.-- Scot

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Marsden,I'm not going to defend Ed Bott's suppositions because I didn't do the research for him. But I will defend the man. Ed Bott is someone I've known for nearly 15 years. He's smart, astute, plugged in with Microsoft, and not a Microsoft hater. This is not someone with a bias writing about WGA. I read his ZDNet blog this AM and I became very alarmed about WGA. I think we should all become alarmed.Requiring us all to use WGA is repugnant. But it's not the end of the world. The key point is this: How does Microsoft intend to force us to run WGA? Given that software has already been published that allows people to remove WGA, it's going to do something. And what it might do is my primary concern about WGA.Ed's concern was that there might be some sort of "kill switch" that would disable Windows. That would be horrible, an absolutely terrrible mistake. In my opinion, such a step should be illegal. I would have to denounce it in no uncertain terms. I completely agree with Ed that Microsoft -- if it is even considering that -- needs to find new drugs.But even the far more likely alternative greatly concerns me. If we opt not to use WGA -- and let's face it, you can understand why many people might want to with Microsoft's stupidity in making it phone home every day (previously) -- does that mean Microsoft withholds security patches? That's not right. They've been struggling with this for years. And made a similar decision with Product Activation. Although I agree that Microsoft has a right to protect its intellectual property, I would have to disagree both with their methods and with Gary's point about China. WPA and WGA are not aimed at China. They're aimed at you and me. Microsoft is unnaturally obsessed with anti-piracy. It's a paranoia in the U.S. At least, it's a paranoia in terms of the protections offered by WPA. Microsoft has admitted that the real issues with piracy in the U.S. are about enterprise-class Software Assurance product IDs that have been released into the public domain. Enterprise-class XP doesn't have Product Activation at all. So those IDs are like a license to install XP willy nilly. The whole point of WGA is to curb that kind of activity. China is a whole separate ball of wax. XP is being counterfeited there. And the real issue is the government's apparent lack of concern about intellectual property.There's another very real issue of concern with WGA. Read Ed Foster's piece today on Infoworld, which talks about average people who've purchased new PCs with legal product ids who after three years (or whatever) WGA has proclaimed to be unauthorized copies of XP. Every major columinst and newsletter author has come across these stories from readers. Fred Langa did some on this several weeks back. This is a real problem. Maybe not for lots of people. But some people are being locked out from Windows Update with WGA problems when they have absolutely legal copies of XP sold to them with new PCs by companies like Dell, Sony, and Lenovo. These people are not being helped at all by Microsoft.Microsoft has to make WGA work for real people before it should jump whole hog into this. It's no OK for the software giant to effectively turn off security patches because some half-baked software checker tool tells it these people aren't legal customers. Software doesn't work 100% of the time. Microsoft needs to think long and hard before it requires WGA of everyone, or else. There is a backlash coming. And, I for one, am going to be part of it if Microsoft does not get it's act together on WGA.-- Scot

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I have been running vista off and on for a couple of weeks. It is getting better but it sure treats my hardware like it is something horrible. I have 1GB of ram and a 1.86 Pentium M chip as well as an atix200 graphics card. For a laptop I think that is doing pretty good. For Vista it means that I sit at 42% CPU usage as a rule while doing nothing! It bounces all over hte place. I am looking to see what goes with it. It has convinced me at this point aht I must look seriously at the MAC. I strongly suspect that my next notebook will be a mac. And face it, I don't touch my tower these days. I put it in my niece's room and had to do a year of updates on it before she arrived for the summer. The heavy hardware requirements are convincing me that it will be cheaper in the long run to switch than to buy newer hardware - at a higher level and new software. I might as well convert as go through all that.

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For someone with a vast knowledge of Microsoft and its history, I'd expect you to know a little more about what Microsoft is likely to do and what they are unlikely to do, based on that same history.
LOL, you have got to be joking right???Based on that logic... Novell is doomed as a Linux company... If I remember correctly they bought Word Perfect for $2 billion and eventually sold it for around $200 million... Outstanding business move there! Didn't their board of directors just fire their CEO (Jack Messman) and CFO (Joseph Tibbetts) in the last couple of weeks??
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I have a 3.0ghz P4 with 1gb ram , a FX 5200 128mb. Nvidia Graphics Card and it sits at about 1 ro 2 % at idle. I only rate a 2 in it's rating system. Without what at least I have, I would not attempt to run it.

Edited by Gary
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I have 1GB of ram and a 1.86 Pentium M chip as well as an atix200 graphics card. For a laptop I think that is doing pretty good. For Vista it means that I sit at 42% CPU usage as a rule while doing nothing! It bounces all over hte place. I am looking to see what goes with it.
So your laptops older chipset has absolutely nothing to do with poor Vista beta 2 performance or the fact that the code is "beta"? My Compaq Presario which is 14 months old has Vista x64 beta 2 installed on a spare partition but it will never run Vista when it ships. I'm ok with that. It has the muscle (2.4 GHz Athlon64 CPU with 2 GB RAM) but lacks the proper video support (no DirectX 9). Next year I'll buy a new laptop with Vista installed and give this one, running XP x64 to my daughter. We'll both be happy.
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None of those reasons have convinced me to get Vista. That and my poor 2GHz 512MB w/ 64MB graphics may struggle. Its Kubuntu and XP for me still, although I haven't had a reason to boot into XP for a while yet. :)

Edited by mvent2
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None of those reasons have convinced me to get Vista. That and my poor 2GHz 512MB w/ 64MB graphics may struggle. Its Kubuntu and XP for me still, although I haven't had a reason to boot into XP for a while yet. :)
You better just to get the updates. :thumbsup:
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You better just to get the updates. :)
I can't imagine how much its going to cost though, here in Australia we are overcharged for almost any piece of software... :thumbsup:
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WPA and WGA are not aimed at China. They're aimed at you and me. Microsoft is unnaturally obsessed with anti-piracy. It's a paranoia in the U.S. At least, it's a paranoia in terms of the protections offered by WPA. Microsoft has admitted that the real issues with piracy in the U.S. are about enterprise-class Software Assurance product IDs that have been released into the public domain.
It's a paranoia in the U.S.
D*** right it is... You think it's just MS getting a bit heavy handed???How about fraud in business alone? 50% of fraudsters commit crimes from within inside a company. 23% of those hold senior management positions. 12% of fraud perpetrators had a previous conviction for a fraud-related offense.Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers 2005 Global Economic Crime Survey of 3,364 senior executives in 34 countries.What does it all add up to? Try...$660 billion The thieves among us...Based on annual revenue loss of 6% to a typical organization. Source: The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners
Requiring us all to use WGA is repugnant.
It may be to you but I personally don't care. My copies of MS operating systems are legit. But we both know how easy it is to grab a bit-torrent client and grab a pirated modified copy of XP or whatever, where WPA and Windows Update are turned off and will NEVER ever phone home. So MS figured they would offer software "extras" requiring a valid copy of XP to download them. Thus WGA... I know many who bought computers form local shops that later turned out to be pirated copies through "hard disk loading" (shop owner takes a single copy and sells it many times, thus increasing his profit). Lots of folks get burned.What I tell everyone, if you don't like the policies... don't use the product.If they go so far as to install a kill switch... good! And those stealing the product will get cut off at the knees. As well they they should. And you'll whine, "What about the innocent? What did they do to deserve this fate?"Why don't we wait to see it it really happens and how well it works. They may just manage to eliminate the false positives... If they did manage that, would you have a problem with it?
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Marsden, think outside the box for a second.The majority of pirated Windows users are crackers (or as they refer to themselves as, "1337 h4x0rs"). They're the ones who usually shamelessly download software whenever they want. Now, when a company attempts to force an anti-piracy measure on us, the hackers don't give in and buy a license. Instead, they develop circumventions around these methods.Thus, their attempts are fruitless because we put up with it whereas they continue on like before. I guarantee a workaround for a kill switch will be released shortly after the kill switch is released. I have seen a program which can "blind" the current validation so people can get updates even if they are running a pirated copy. You heard right. So what is stopping them from working around any other anti-piracy attempt of Microsoft?In the end, we get more useless crap on our system and they continue to get all the benefits we paid dearly for, but they just decided to help themselves to. Try as they might, its not going to work. The hackers are smarter than what Microsoft thinks.

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Try as they might, its not going to work. The hackers are smarter than what Microsoft thinks.
Yep... and MS is bloated with truly stupid people. :) And what is to prevent MS from employing an external key (USB) with AES 256bit encryption? A brute force side channel attack will take an enormous amount of computing time and MS could just easily build a key changing algorithm into the USB device.I guess it will all depend on how far the hackers and pirates push MS...
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The external USB key isn't as far out as it sounds. Many software distributors employed a similar external device in the pre-DOS days.I remember it because the C-64 hackers got around it in a couple of weeks.

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And what if the first thing that external USB (dongle) does is imprint itself with hardware codes and product key from your system and then locks itself? From then on that USB "key" is as good as a brick on any other machine. What if the hardware manufactures create an encrypted channel just for that USB key? We could go on and on...As long as MS is one step ahead (you can't hack something that has not been created yet)... the game goes on forever...

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It may be to you but I personally don't care. My copies of MS operating systems are legit. But we both know how easy it is to grab a bit-torrent client and grab a pirated modified copy of XP or whatever, where WPA and Windows Update are turned off and will NEVER ever phone home. So MS figured they would offer software "extras" requiring a valid copy of XP to download them. Thus WGA...I know many who bought computers form local shops that later turned out to be pirated copies through "hard disk loading" (shop owner takes a single copy and sells it many times, thus increasing his profit). Lots of folks get burnedWhat I tell everyone, if you don't like the policies... don't use the product.If they go so far as to install a kill switch... good! And those stealing the product will get cut off at the knees. As well they they should. And you'll whine, "What about the innocent? What did they do to deserve this fate?"Why don't we wait to see it it really happens and how well it works. They may just manage to eliminate the false positives... If they did manage that, would you have a problem with it?
(bold emphasis mine)Marsden, many people have told you two main things about your viewpoints and you've managed to compile them both into this reply. ...1. The world is comprised of more people than just you. So, it may not happen to affect you. Well, hurray for you. It may not necessarily be same for other people (yes, there are other people on this planet).2. You know very well that, with Microsoft's monopoly, it's not as easy to go "Microsoft-free" as you make it sound. Windows a necessity for many businesses because they require the use of software that only works with Microsoft Windows. ...And the reason that it only works with Windows is because Windows has such a high market share. And the reason for that is because most software is written for it! It's a vicious cycle and multiplies itself, as you can see.
As long as MS is one step ahead (you can't hack something that has not been created yet)... the game goes on forever...
Exactly!!! ...So why waste so much money, resources, and rhetoric on it? Edited by epp_b
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I think the issue of adoption still comes back to hardware.Reading your article, Scot, I admit I can see several new functions within Vista that would make it a welcome successor to XP. But the hardware required to get the most out the OS is too new for many users. We all know people who are still running 98/98SE/ME because it's all their hardware can handle, and they don't see an urgent need to upgrade. I don't see Vista bringing anything to the table that will change that behavior.Geeks, early adopters and those buying new computers will assure MS of millions of sales when Vista is released. But millions more will hesitate, some for years. It almost seems that with each iteration of Windows, the rate of prompt upgrading has lessened. I know very few people who didn't leap into 95 when it came out. It was considered such a revolutionary improvement over any other OS then available. Likewise, 98/98SE was seen as a massive improvement over 95, and it handled the 95-era hardware easily. Again, most people I've talked to about upgrades say that they were eager to install 98/98SE. W2K was well received though mostly only among business users, and even those folk were not easy to convince to roll out a new OS over the entire enterprise immediately upon its release. XP was probably the OS to be adopted the slowest. 98/98SE was a good enough OS for many people who didn't demand all that much from their computers. They didn't sense an overwhelming need to buy XP. Those that did install XP could at least do so using their 98-era hardware. Vista's lack of must-have improvements and hardware demands I suspect will make it the slowest adopted Microsoft OS yet.As much as I'm enjoying the beta, on my laptop even more than the desktop, I know for a fact that I won't be even considering changing over for at least as long as MS supports XP Pro. So it could easily be another 7 years or more before I really have to consider Vista, and by then it will be a vastly different OS than it will be at release.

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Going MS "free" is as easy or as hard as you make it.Many of you probably wonder what I do for a living... I wonder myself all the time. I'm a principle in a IP video capture company. 4 months ago we (actually my head sales guy) pitched Sysco Corp. (Today, SYSCO has sales and service relationships with approximately 390,000 customers and remains committed to helping them succeed in the food service industry. Operating from 170 locations throughout the contiguous United States and portions of Alaska, Hawaii, and Canada, today SYSCO's product lines are as diverse as the 47,500 employees who support its daily operations. $30.3 billion in sales in 2005.)Sold them on a video capture product that did not exist. Nobody made it. Over two weekends I put some off the shelf hardware components together and created a battery powered, WiFi enabled, digital video capture device able to similtaneously capture 30 frames per/sec across 8 cameras.new-cam-case-1.pngnew-battery-case-1.pngnew-cam-case-2.png The original prototype was for a single camera hidden in a working CO2 detector. That changed to 8 cameras (1 rear backup, 1 right side cam and 6 interior trailer cams)Very low power... able to capture video for 2 weeks! Try that on your laptop... The key is the video which is processed and compressed on our proprietary video capture chips and not on the CPU itself.The unit also has GPS and is able to transmit video via satellite from anywhere in North America.After I did the prototype and it proved it could work as advertised, it was sent overnight to Taiwan where it was quickly redesigned into a basic single board computer (everything integrated on a single board including memory and video capture).There are now 20 of these new units rolling around Northern Calif. If they work as advertised it is a $50 million deal. They have over 15,000 trucks!Oh, what are we running on it? We could have used embedded CE but went with RH 5 Embedded. It was cheaper...

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I think it all boils down to hardware as well like Jeber stated. Marsden, I don't know what you call new. I am not running an AMD 64 because I have not seen the support for it yet. As far as my specs, this tablet is less than 6 months old and is fairly current. It was not a cheap machine. The Pentium M chips have not moved up to a much higher level since January. In fact, it is still more computer than your average user has right now.I am convinced that Vista will only be adopted by the "got to have it" folks and those buying new, higher end computers. There is going to be a divide in the market where folks look at the price. Folks on a budget are going to say "Does this $400 laptop do everything I need?" while those that have to have the latest will spend more to get a higher level laptop and spend the $2000 or whatever it takes to get a good working Vista. Before I go to that extreme, I will spend the money on a Mac and then dual boot it with Linux. Tha way I will have the Linux to play with and the Mac to do those things like quicken that I can't live without.By the way I get my daughter's cast offs at this point in life. Somewhere down the line it switched. :thumbsup: Then again, I told her that her computer with 4GB of RAM and all 500GB of hard dries was the last I was buying her. :) She should be able to run Vista as soon as it will work with Maya.

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Seriously, if Dell can sell a desktop media center PC with a 17" flat screen with free shipping for $499... Not to mention Intel and AMD whacking each other in a soon to be here price war... The extra horsepower Vista might require from currently shipping systems will not amount to very much cost wise (CPU being the most expensive component). There will be the usual low to high end Vista systems.Your tablet has some limitations... battery life which affects total CPU horsepower. If I crank my Presario up to 2.4 GHz it gets noisy and quite hot, not to mention very short battery life like 1.5-2 hrs. I doubt your tablet comes anywhere near it's maximum CPU speed. Will there be Vista tablets? Probably, but they will have even lower powered CPUs and better graphics. Then there are the new hybrid HDs coming... more flash equals less juice to run...Most laptops next year will sport dual cores and better graphics... the middle of next year they will be pushing out quad cores...Historically, the hardware gets cheaper as the horsepower requirements get steeper. My first modern era PC cost over $5K for an Intel 486DX2 with 16 MBs of RAM and a 40MB HD (pre Win95).In contrast, my Presario Athlon64 3700 with 2GBs of RAM and a 80GB HD cost less than $1800. (running XP Pro x64)Next year it will have two CPU cores, the same memory or more and a larger HD and most likely cost less.

Edited by Marsden11
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A good friend of mine has written a new operating system from the bottom up and the kernel will load and run on a $.60 cent chip. Need to upgrade the kernel? Just replace the $.60 cent chip... He's in the process of securing VC funds for the project...Some day we may be standing in line at the grocery check out and pluck a CPU off the rack for a few bucks or less...

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