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Re: Vista Pros and Cons

  • Subject: Re: Vista Pros and Cons
  • From: "Rex Ballard" <rex.ballard@xxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: 20 Dec 2006 21:33:44 -0800
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Oliver Wong wrote:
> "Roy Schestowitz" <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1843524.TYTyTnVIIs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > The Five Best and Worst Things About Vista
> > ,----[ Quote ]
> > | Like any new operating system, though, there are things you'll love
> > | about it, and things you'll hate about it. Check out my list of five
> > | things you'll love and five things you'll hate, and add to the list
> > | by using the link at the bottom of the article.
> > `----
http://www.windowsdevcenter.com/pub/a/windows/2006/12/19/the-five-best-and-worst-things-about-vista.html
>
>     Hooray for balanced reporting.

I'm not so sure it was all that balanced.
>     The good stuff was pretty much what I expected: Aero, networking,
> security, etc. The bad stuff, on the other hand, surprised me:

Aero
You thought the eye candy on XP was "Fischer Price", memory hungry, and
slow?
Just wait until you get Aero!  Too bad 32 bit processors can't access
more than 2 Gig of memory, and Vista 64 can't run 32 bit XP
applications.  Because this thing is going to suck up memory and CPU
cycles like no one's business.

Networking
Ubiqutous networking, kind of like Konqueror?  Yet another example of
Microsoft creating or buying or pirating a knock-off of some OSS code,
then calling it a "Microsoft Innovation".  The only thing that makes it
an innovation is that Microsoft is shipping it as bundleware.

Keep in mind that, if you like, you can unstall Cygwin, X11, the Qt
libraries, and Konqueror and have the same thing - without selling your
first born child to Microsoft for a cup of soup.

Of course, all that friendliness comes with a huge set of security
risks - more about that later.

If you want some really nice sharing, you should get tortoise CVS and
put it on your XP machine.  You can connect to a CVS server (preferably
on Linux) and have the history, security, auditing ,and archiving
capabilities to know the exact history of every document your share.
You can control who put what where.

Or you can just share whatever you feel like, hope that maybe it hasn't
been modified by some demented hacker, or just some idiot who decided
to enable ActiveX on IE, previewing in full scripted HTML, and
automatic open of all OLE objects and attachments.

Wireless Networking
Yes, this one aught to be very popular.  Why pay for broadband when you
can steal it from your neighbors.  You should be really welcome at
Starbucks.  And of course, you can have everyone else grabbing your
laptop as a free ride on someone elses network.

And all that stuff you are sharing, they can share it too.  Don't
forget to share the letters to your mistress, and the letters from your
wife, in the same share.

Search
Google desktop was so good that Microsoft decided that they HAD to
steal it.
Linux has had text search engines built in since 1994.  The early
versions used the WAIS search engine.  Of course, parsing Word,
Powerpoint, and Excel documents to capture the information needed for
content based searches is all kinds of fun.  ODF uses XML which can be
searched and index using generic text tools.

Security
Based on the description, this isn't security, it's censorship.  It's
also anticompetitive by nature.  If you aren't runing MICROSOFT'S
software, you don't get to use the network.

> <quote>
> Backup
>
> Remember the backup program in Windows XP? A pretty sorry piece of work,
> wasn't it? Well, the backup program built into Windows Vista will make you
> absolutely pine for it. It's one of the worst utilities you'll ever
> use--although it's such a poor piece of work, it's likely you won't bother
> to use it.

Notice that there is still no way to back up installed applications,
configurations, and other key personalizations.  Which means that it
will still take you a week or more to fully recover if you have to
reimage that hard drive.

> [...]
>
> Fewer Power User Features
>
> Microsoft has tried mightily to make Windows Vista easy to master for the
> average user, but they've also made changes along the way that power users
> won't be happy about.

> For example, in Windows XP, you were able to customize
> to a remarkable degree what actions should be taken when you open or view a
> file;

This is in direct defiance of the antitrust order.  Microsoft had to
delay release of Vista until the anticompetition clauses of the order
had expired.  They kept all of the focus on their defiance of the
disclosure order, diverted the attention away from the blatent defiance
of nearly every other aspect of settlement.

This pretty much means the end of 3rd party software for Windows Vista
users.  Even if Microsoft doesn't maket it, the get to say whether you
can use it.  Goodby RealPlayer, QuickTime, Napster, MP3.  Say goodbye
to OpenOffice, FireFox, and Thunderbird or Lotus Notes.  Oh sure, the
3rd party vendors will eventually figure out how to get around the
barricades - if they think it's worth the bother.  This makes OOS,
Java, and multiplatform APIs look even more attractive.  And if
Microsoft doesn't want to play nice, Linux is going to be irresistable.

> you can't do that any longer unless you dig extremely deep into the
> Registry. Similarly, you used to have a great deal more control over
> multiboot options than you do now.

That pretty much clinches it for me.  I want nothing to do with Vista
at this point.
Thank goodness it's not too late to get a Linux ready machine with XP.

> </quote>

>     - Oliver


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