Vista

[mamboqueen]

Microsoft has a new operating system coming out...Vista. Anyone going to convert from Windows right away? I'd love to hear feedback about this as I was going to make some changes to my computer at work, but don't know if it makes sense to do if we end up changing to Vista.

They're already reporting some glitches:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/25/technology/25vista.html?ei=5090&en=49a6ffcc2da87302&ex=1324702800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Just wondering if the concensus is that this will make Windows obsolete. Thoughts?

[Corne]

I am going to wait a few months before i upgrade my home computer to Vista. The first release of software is always too buggy to use.

[DWise1]

Vista is the new version of Windows. How could it make Windows obsolete?

Oh yeah, it would if it's really bad.

My first test of a new version of Windows: does it still have a command line? Take away my command line and I'm outa there!

[tanya_the_dancer]

I am not going to go to Vista. I have upgraded my IE to version 7 which has some of the Vista functionality, and I was having so many problems with it, especially with tabs functionality crashing all the time on exit, that I gave up in disgust and switched to using Firefox.

[mamboqueen]

Vista is the new version of Windows. How could it make Windows obsolete?



Sorry, I'm technically challenged...it just sounded very different to me. So, I'm wondering if the same Office products you use with Windows are compatible with Vista...or do you have to buy another version?

[DWise1]

I heard the comment that Vista is supposed to be Microsoft's effort to copy the Mac's Aqua. Which, of course, underwhelms me.

My most thrilling moments on an iMac were 1) discovering that it had a command line and 2) discovering that it had a text editor.

-----------------
Now if we could just get Luddites to use email, then we could really organize and there'd be no stopping us!

[LucyDiamond]

I'll probably wait to upgrade at home AFTER we upgrade at work and I've had a chance to check it out. I'll let my work PC be the guinea pig. :raisebro:

[alemana]

oh god, more opportunities for microsoft to make me miserable. can't wait.

[Beto]

oh god, more opportunities for microsoft to make me miserable. can't wait.
It's what they do best. I loved the little jab that Bill Gates and Microsoft took in "Tomorrow Never Dies".

Elliot Carver (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000596/): Mr. Jones, are we ready to release our new software?
Jones (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0768350/): Yes, sir. As requested, it's full of bugs, which means people will be forced to upgrade for years.
Elliot Carver (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000596/): Outstanding.

;)

[alemana]

welcome to my life.

[quixotedlm]

alemana, beto - this ain't slashdot. so take it easy :)

dwise1 - check out powershell (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/default.mspx)aka monad. if you love command line, this will make you even happier.

tanya - What kind of a pc do you use? if your want to try making it work, please PM me. I can try to help. If you didn't know it already, IE7 can be uninstalled (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/default.mspx) to get back your old functional IE6 (although I would recommend troubleshooting instead. IE7 is certainly more secure than IE6).

mamboqueen -

There is no need to worry about upgrading your PC to Windows Vista yet, or at least, not without inventorying your hardware to make sure that the upgrade will be a good experience for you. Windows Vista is the next OS in the Windows line of operating systems, and is compatible with your applications like Office. Actually, I expect pretty much all mainstream applications to work seamlessly on Vista. If you are a PC user, you will eventually move to Vista - most likely when you buy your next PC or laptop which will come preinstalled with Vista. Sooner or later, XP will go out of market.

So is it any better than Windows XP? Yes, it's better.
Will be you able to experience the 'better' OS ? In some ways yes, in many ways no. The visual effects and many visible changes are the least of changes in Vista. Most of the interesting stuff goes beneath the visible layers. What it does is reduce the number of times ordinary users would give up in disgust because the cost of fixing up their spyware/malware/virus infested PC is too much to pay at Circuit City and so they instead simply buy a new machine. So in effect, it is the hassles you won't deal with that makes Vista a great value for your money.

When the power outage in Seattle (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003494001_christmaslights25m.html) happened last week, I got my power back after just over a day (lucky me. There are still those without power). I come home and turned on my PC, and everything is as it was - applications still running, my outlook open and so on. My computer was running Vista and was sleeping when the power got yanked out (for the technically minded, it was NOT in hibernation, but simply sleeping. For the not-so-technically mindedd, 'sleeping' is a power saving mode that Vista goes into just like XP does, which is almost like being in the screensaver mode). So that made my day - I was typing something that was left unsaved and I didn't have to rethink it all over again because a stupid storm blew over our skies. To me, that's worth the upgrade.

What about the "glitches" ? There will always be glitches, and there will always be reports that make a big deal of it (and sometimes, rightfully so). It happens in the world of Mac and Linux also. The reality is that an OS like Windows (XP or Vista) is one of the most complex pieces of engineering mankind has ever done - probably even exceeding the complexity of space shuttles and satellites. The ones you've mentioned from the nytimes article is a claim that's not yet proven - although it sounds (and likely is) credible. I recently heard a virus researcher mention that the underground hacker community is starting to seem more lucrative than writing anti-virus solutions (think - this guy is trying to sell his stuff for 50k a pop). In spite of the credibility of a "bug" or "vulnerability" report, it might still mean nothing to most users. As an analogy, suppose you have a soft body made up of ordinary skin. It's true that it is "vulnerable" to a bullet from a gun. The body will probably break down badly, or even die. But what if you stood behind a bulletproof wall, or wore a bulletproof jacket? Or if you just moved to a city enclosed in a bulletproof dome, and every entrance into the city is searched carefully - somewhat like an airport? Even better, what if you got yourself this personal energy shield that covers your body and moves with you - the kind of stuff from futuristic scifi movies - that will let you interact will everything normally including touch etc, but will bounce a speding bullet? Then your body becomes less vulnerable or invulnerable to bullets. Many of the invisible features in Vista are like a dome of bulletproof glass, or the personal energy shield that will keep the OS protected from 'attacks' even if there are 'bugs' in the OS. You'll still be affected if you voluntarily take down those shields, but the OS will be shipped with those shields turned on, and if you leave the security settings untouched, you'll likely remain protected from almost all of these things.

If you want to pick an alternative, I would recommend Mac. It's a very clean and well done OS - extremely elegant and easy to use. The flip side is that there isn't enough free and cool applications to run on the Mac. But if your needs are somewhat minimal (email, word processing, spreadsheets, internet, multimedia music/videos, caledering etc), you probably won't need much else that's not in the Mac already anyway.

[quixotedlm]

Disclaimer - I work for a certain famous Redmond based company. I also directly work on most things that this thread is discussing, although never with the intention of causing alemana or beto any discomfort :)

[alemana]

if i were king, gates would be first against the wall.

[DWise1]

I got together with my sister's family for Xmas early dinner, after which I was going to go home, take care of the dog, and then go visit some friends at an open house. Our plans got dented seriously by two hours wasted by Windows.

My niece gave her mother a new computer. Their old one -- came bundled with Win 95, but got upgraded to Win 98 -- had been running impossibly slow and their dial-up access has been seriously hosed for the past couple years. So we're trying to transfer files from the old one to the new one. No NIC card in the old one, so my niece's boyfriend decided to do a direct cable connection and he brought a parallel port cable for that purpose. The new one doesn't have a parallel port. OK, I pull my laptop out of the car to use as an intermediary. The old one isn't set up to do direct cable and they can't find the OS CD to install it; I have one for 98, but it's at home. OK, I've got a DOS version of LapLink on my laptop, so we set up the cable and start running LapLink on the old one and on the laptop. But they just refuse to connect. Finally it hits me: XP won't let LapLink anywhere near the parallel port. XP is so intent to keeping the software away from the hardware that it was keeping us from getting the job done. So we adjourned to the long-delayed dinner singing praises to Brother Bill who's making Windows so easy to use that it has become impossible for us to complete our tasks.

Costs: Frustration, strained relationships (my niece was getting more and more impatient with her boyfriend who kept trying to get something working; Plan C was to try to email the files out, but he couldn't get the dial-up service to work), lost time, I ended up going straight to the open house and Oscar had to wait longer for me to get home and take care of him.
Sharing a common enemy: Priceless.


PS
I got my previous laptop a bit sooner than I needed to because XP was about to be released. Now my current laptop has XP, but I have gotten rid of the horrid Fisher-Price desktop and that totally hosed "start menu" and frustratingly sh***y task bar, have it running instead as a "classic Windows" interface. I shudder to think of how Vista's going to hose up the interface -- it had better continue to offer the ability to toss out the idiotic new interface and switch to something that works. So, no, I'm not going to get any Vista machine until I'm forced to by needing to buy a new machine.

BTW, what idiot at Microsoft decided to help out those script-kiddie email worm and trojan writers? By default -- default! -- Windows hides file extensions from the user. By default! That is precisely what those email trojans depend on. They send a file called important.doc.exe and they're depending on Windows hiding that executable file extension from the user, who will see it as important.doc and, thinking it's a document file, double-clicks on it and has just handed his machine over to the hacker. All because some idiot at Microsoft decided to make that possible by hiding file extensions by default!. And other idiots there have decided to continue to pull that bone-head maneuver in version after version of Windows. A shoe-in candidate for the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award if ever I've seen one.

Note: Everyone, turn the feature off! Open Windows Explorer. In the menu under Tools, pick Folder Options; the dialog will open. Pick the View tab. One of the options is "Hide extensions for known file types" (should be immediately visible towards the bottom of the list). If it is checked, uncheck it! Click the Apply button. Then click the Apply to All Folders button at the top. Then click OK. Look at the lising of a directory to verify that it's displaying the file extensions. Check on that every now and then; some versions of Windows kept wanting to "correct" your settings.

A side effect of that feature was in my Java class. We could not understand the icons they had assigned to the .java and .class files and the extensions were hidden, so each class the lecturer had to struggle with trying to figure that out. Just Brother Bill making life easier and easier for us.

Not!

[quixotedlm]

Our plans got dented seriously by two hours wasted by Windows.

Come on, you tried an arcane scenario and then complain... It's not common to want to file transfer from Win9x to any other machine using parallel/serial cables. The most common way of getting files out of machine is to burn them into a CD or DVD - using an external (or internal) writer, or copy to an external media storage (USB HDD) etc. Actually in the days of Win9x, it was winzip+ 10-20 floppies. (Compare that with other OS'es, like most linux distros, that won't do common scenarios like watching a DVD well. Yeah, Mac probably would have done it better).

Altough, if you really wanted to get geeky and do it efficiently, you could have simply plugged in the hard disk from Win9x into the new machine and copied the files locally.

That said, OS upgrade or migration is a hard to solve area - I can't think of any OS that has solved it to work extremely well and seamlessly already. Most people I know know that they have to invest care and attention to any sort of upgrade. Wanting to wing it is just expecting too much. (Although, the OS migration wizard from XP to Vista works like a charm).

[quixotedlm]

I shudder to think of how Vista's going to hose up the interface -- it had better continue to offer the ability to toss out the idiotic new interface and switch to something that works.

Yes, you can go back to the older interface, the older visual style, or both. Personally, the interface is much better than ever. Depending on whether your hardware can take the heat or not, Vista will automatically dumb down the visual styles.


BTW, what idiot at Microsoft decided to help out those script-kiddie email worm and trojan writers?

Most users don't care about this. The idea of associating a filename extension (like .exe or .vbs) with an executable is starting to get old. Unix has never subscribed to this idea (where any file, with any name, can be made an executable), and if you leave your email program with default settings, pretty much all of them will block executable content. Or if you use a halfway decent antivirus program, it will block all that executable content too and warn you about it.

That a social engineering attack vector exists is a fact, but the folks who would fall for it are unlikely to know anything about .exe extensions or be able to use that intelligently to protect themselves.

[quixotedlm]

So maybe this thread is going to become a slashdot style flamewar :) So while things are getting interesting, I thought I'd share a though with y'all, especially those of you who are not computer geeks ;)

The stuff we are talking about is mostly geek stuff. I usually try to keep perspective of issues that are common scenarios and not very edgy geeky stuff that only few users care about (although 'few' is numerically large somtimes), I've probably lost that perspective already in this therad.

The first question mamboqueen has (about IE7, or whether she should upgrade to Vista) is a "normal" question with normal answers. So far, the rest of the conversation here has centered around things that only geeks care about and generally woudlnt' affect normal users...

[chachachacat]

:pI have an iMac.:p

[bjp22tango]

The first question mamboqueen has (about IE7, or whether she should upgrade to Vista) is a "normal" question with normal answers. So far, the rest of the conversation here has centered around things that only geeks care about and generally woudlnt' affect normal users...

I have officially been named a geek :cool:

I would say it generally affects people who have been around computers longer than 5 years and know what has been hidden from the general user.

The general frustrations of most computer users can seem like flame wars to the tech "avant garde" who has all the latest gadgets and is invested in the latest and greatest, but in the real world we use what we have laying around e.g. parallel/serial cables and "out of date" software/hardware. And we can survive a surprisingly long time without flashy new "technical advances".

I am currently using two mp3 players that are 4 years old and are considered dinosaurs and are no longer of interest to their maker. Try that with any dishwasher/washer/dryer/car.

Dealer: "I'm so sorry, you have a 2002 model Nissan XXXXX. We no longer service those, you need to upgrade to the 2007 model...." Um, no thanks.

Computers do make life infinitely easier and I doubt any of us who use them would want to go back to life pre-1980, but allow us our grumbles. It doesn't mean we want to nuke a certain Redmond based business in real life, but lobbing a few virtual grenades has its stress relieving benefits.

[quixotedlm]

The general frustrations of most computer users can seem like flame wars to the tech "avant garde" who has all the latest gadgets and is invested in the latest and greatest, but in the real world we use what we have laying around e.g. parallel/serial cables and "out of date" software/hardware. And we can survive a surprisingly long time without flashy new "technical advances".

I am currently using two mp3 players that are 4 years old and are considered dinosaurs and are no longer of interest to their maker. Try that with any dishwasher/washer/dryer/car.

Mmm... what I meant was that most users are insulated from these edge case scenarios because they delegate it to the pros or the geeks. The pros and geeks aren't allowed to grumble :)

I still have a 1.2 megapixel camera. But hey, it's digital!!
My music player until yesterday was a 128 MB flash based player. But I'm a proud owner of an iPod now. Hurray!!! That was my gift to myself for being good all this year ;)

Computers do make life infinitely easier and I doubt any of us who use them would want to go back to life pre-1980, but allow us our grumbles. It doesn't mean we want to nuke a certain Redmond based business in real life, but lobbing a few virtual grenades has its stress relieving benefits.

Well, Windows bashers suck. Grumble away... :rolleyes:

[quixotedlm]

:pI have an iMac.:p

smart move..

this realization just dawned on me - i've never been attracted to any woman who owns a PC laptop. They all seem to own a mac... hmm...

[DWise1]

BTW, what idiot at Microsoft decided to help out those script-kiddie email worm and trojan writers? Most users don't care about this. The idea of associating a filename extension (like .exe or .vbs) with an executable is starting to get old.

Wrong, users do care about getting infected. Almost to the point of paranoia. It's not just a geek thing, as you are saying, but rather it's something that directly affects all personal computer users. I personally know people who absolutely refuse to get a computer, even though their employment is starting to require it, because they are terrified of it getting infected. It is a very real concern.

In order to protect ourselves, we need more information, not to have vital information withheld from us and kept hidden. If an individual wants to keep himself ignorant of the kinds of files he's getting, then let him choose for himself to hide that information; do not make that choice for him. What possible justification can Microsoft offer for aiding in the breach of the security on the computers of so many of its customers? Besides the one you already offered, that we're too dumb to know the difference or to care.

[quixotedlm]

Wrong, users do care about getting infected. Almost to the point of paranoia. It's not just a geek thing, as you are saying, but rather it's something that directly affects all personal computer users. I personally know people who absolutely refuse to get a computer, even though their employment is starting to require it, because they are terrified of it getting infected. It is a very real concern.

You are absolutely right - I know this because I know way too many people who don't know how to download pictures from their digital camera (and some of them have a PhD in medicine - go figure!).

What I said about most people not caring about was filename extensions and its visibility. The point being that people who are capable of clicking something random generally don't know anything about extensions. This is especially true of the younger generation of computer users who have never ever used DOS, Wordstar or Lotus-123. The older crowd (which today is in the minority compared to the overall userbase for any OS) does know about these things and is generally more adept at learning - because learning computers on DOS was no easy task.

What people really want is for the OS to "just work", and the apps to just do the right thing and never offer them the wrong choice.

What savvy users want is for the OS to give them all their options upfront and let them configure and tweak it to suit themselves.

The distinction here is that the userbase of Windows (or Mac) is not made up of savvy people (savvy in the context of computers) - rather it is made up of ordinary office users and mom-n-pop type of folks who couldnt' care less about these details. The reason there is so much grumbling happening is because the number of savvy people who would complain about the OS being "dumbed down" is waay too numerous. I think you might just have inspired me to find the folks who are responsible for making up different SKU's and perhaps suggesting to them that we need to have a 'Geek Edition' for the next OS version... :).

When I started out, nobody trusted the Windowsupdate patches from Microsoft. Today, the world is a different place where the patches work, work right and are trusted by many businesses implicitly as "good". XPSP2 did the same thing for homes users - I have friends who run xpsp2 without an antivirus or a third-party firewall, but simply enable (or not-disable) the inbuilt firewall - and have never been infected by anything (most of them are techies, so they know to use the PC carefully.

I do believe that Vista+IE7 (and Office 2007, and Exchange 2007 on the server side) together will further this streak of confidence building. And this is the reason I suggest folks that upgrading to Vista will be a good thing.


Besides the one you already offered, that we're too dumb to know the difference or to care.

That's a good enough reason, actually. Users should not have to deal with the complexities of the OS and PC. Rather, they should just be able to go about their business without intrusions. So if someone is "too dumb to know", it just means that they have better things to do in life (and doesn't imply that they wouldn't be able to learn it if they tried). Exposing all the options and making it ultimately configurable is why Linux is not gaining momentum as a home PC OS.

[DWise1]

I certainly realize that an operating system is an enormous undertaking and, yes, under the hood XP is a vast improvement over previous versions (no longer having to reboot every time you change the IP address being a more visible example) and, undoubtedly, Vista will, under the hood, be a further improvement. But then that's not what I was talking about.

That the Fisher-Price desktop of XP is garish and just plain ugly is a matter of aesthetics; maybe there are some people who actually like it. I found that the new start menu made it too difficult to work with or to find anything, so I replaced it with the old style (I've been a software professsional since 1982). The task bar's nasty habit of stacking multiple documents into the same button was made it impossible to work with; it cut off the file name from the entry list, so I couldn't tell one document from the other. So I turned that feature off as quickly as I could. And then there's that matter of hiding vital information from the user in order to allow them to be lured into compromising their computer's security (with the attitude of "like turkeys being killed for Thanksgiving, it's God punishing them for being so stupid"). If those are Microsoft's ideas of "improving" the user interface, then I have very good reason to be skeptical about what that same team will hoist on us with Vista.

What's runnng under the hood is one thing (and a very important thing), but the user interface (UI) is what's visible and what provides the "look and feel" and what the user has to deal with all the time. You could have the best possible OS, but if the UI is hosed then the OS will be perceived as being hosed.

But this issue of choosing by default to hide information that is vital to the protection of your system's security. That is not an OS issue. It's not even a UI issue. It is an issue of somebody's decision as to how the OS and UI should be configured. And that this bone-head decision continues to be made only makes us wonder what other wonderless decisions have been made for us (with the corperate attitude that we're so stupid we deserve to crash and burn as a result of that default setting). It's bone-head decisions like that which directly attack the public's confidence in Microsoft. It's not us attacking Microsoft, but rather Microsoft shooting itself in its own collective foot, because it can't pull its collective head out. And what other bone-head decisions await us in Vista?

I'm sorry you're getting hit with this. I strongly suspect that life can be like it is for IRS agents, who at social gatherings will introduce themselves as drug dealers because it's more socially acceptable than being an IRS agent. I've sure that you've heard more than your share of grumblings about Windows. But instead of just dismissing us all as a bunch of malcontents, consider for a moment that we do have just cause for being dissatisfied.

[quixotedlm]

That the Fisher-Price desktop of XP is garish and just plain ugly is a matter of aesthetics; maybe there are some people who actually like it. I found that the new start menu made it too difficult to work with or to find anything, so I replaced it with the old style (I've been a software professsional since 1982). The task bar's nasty habit of stacking multiple documents into the same button was made it impossible to work with; it cut off the file name from the entry list, so I couldn't tell one document from the other. So I turned that feature off as quickly as I could.

aesthetics is subjective :) enough said.
we do hire some of the best usability engineers in the world. for me, vista's start menu is infinitely more usable than anything else so far. give it a shot or read about it... it's usable because i no longer have to navigate thru menus to get to what i want. :)
'group similar taskbar items' still is the default, i think. it's checked for me right now - but i can't remember if that was the default or i enabled it. But with live previews of taskbar items and flip-3d, this problem is likley to just go away.


And then there's that matter of hiding vital information from the user in order to allow them to be lured into compromising their computer's security (with the attitude of "like turkeys being killed for Thanksgiving, it's God punishing them for being so stupid"). If those are Microsoft's ideas of "improving" the user interface, then I have very good reason to be skeptical about what that same team will hoist on us with Vista.

I asked around about this and was hit with the obvious answer - that users like to rename files. if the filename extension is visible, then often foo.doc gets renamed to "bar" (without the .doc extension), making the file mysteriously unusable. the simplest solution is to drop the .doc extension from explorer views, which has been done. IMO, a better solution would have been to enable edit of the filename only and magically prevent the editing of extensions, and there are other variations I can think of, all of which are more complex than just getting rid of the extension from showing.

And that this bone-head decision continues to be made only makes us wonder what other wonderless decisions have been made for us (with the corperate attitude that we're so stupid we deserve to crash and burn as a result of that default setting). It's bone-head decisions like that which directly attack the public's confidence in Microsoft.

Umm... it's never the corporate attitude that's the problem, or Bill Gates for that matter. Every large system is fraught with inefficiencies and inadequacies. Some decisions are bad, and some are good. Sometimes, there is no way to envision the correct solution (esp. in ussability and UI design) by means of extensive user studies and beta tests, and the only way to get credible feedback is to start with and idea that has passed plenty of studies and put it in a product and let the market give us feedback. That may not seem like a happy choice to you, but that's how most of us feel too. This happens because the number of different personalities using Windows is so diverse that there is no way to generalize expectations effectively all the time.

And what other bone-head decisions await us in Vista?

You can bet there are a few :) How do I know that? We are our own worse and most passionate critics. We tear apart teams that don't make good decisions with a passion that goes beyond what you are showing now and what anybody on /. can muster up. And when we speak, we are actually heard. But we can't win every battle, esp. the ones where the "right decision" is arguable. What kills one person is another persons heaven - so it sometimes comes down to deciding which type of customer is more prevalent.




I'm sorry you're getting hit with this. I strongly suspect that life can be like it is for IRS agents, who at social gatherings will introduce themselves as drug dealers because it's more socially acceptable than being an IRS agent. I've sure that you've heard more than your share of grumblings about Windows. But instead of just dismissing us all as a bunch of malcontents, consider for a moment that we do have just cause for being dissatisfied.

Hey, read back my answers and tell me if I've been dismissive? If you ever find a single coworker of mine who did that (admittedly, that would be a stretch), I'd be very surprised! But "bill gates sucks" and "microsoft is evil" are comments that deserves being dismissed.

Actually, life is not like being an IRS agent at all. I have friends who work in google, amazon, intel and often come across techies with strong backgrounds in linux, enterprise level network administration etc. Every time, my affiliation with my company works like a charm and only makes people look at me as someone very credible. The only times I try to avoid mentioning my employer is in purely social situations esp. around Seattle area where there is a stereotype of us being uber geeks with no social skills whatsoever and the inability to converse about anything but arcane technology. This peception is a dealbreaker and so I might not mention who I work for in social situations in this city, but it doesn't bother me in other cities.

But it's all too common to hear about how someone's life got terrible because Windows did something soo bad... but the way i look at it, there is no one else around to do anything good or bad (no, the "bad monopoly" argument doesn't apply for other operating systems yet. linux/mac just haven't found steam enough to even try...)

[Joe]

I don't think there's anything that Vista will do for me that XP won't. Aside from whatever the new "look" is.

[Pacion]

The point being that people who are capable of clicking something random generally don't know anything about extensions. This is especially true of the younger generation of computer users who have never ever used DOS, Wordstar or Lotus-123. The older crowd (which today is in the minority compared to the overall userbase for any OS) does know about these things and is generally more adept at learning - because learning computers on DOS was no easy task.

Even though I am about a thousand years old, :lol: I don't consider myself part of the older crowd as yet. However, I do remember using Lotus-123, and a time when there was a word processing package of some sort. Then, along came Windows/Microsoft Office. Bugs or not, I believe that Bill Gates & Co helped pushed the boundaries big time and as the innovator, challenged people to think about what they are doing. Am not a programmer, am not a "geek". What I really appreciated as the enduser is that Bill Gates & Co STANDARDISED the application toolbars. Therefore, instead of having to know a word processing package, a spreadsheet package, a presentation package, an email package (I shudder when I think back to what I first saw as an email package and it wasn't Microsoft/Outlook) etc etc, once you knew one, it was relatively easy to pick up another. I sat down with PowerPoint version 5 or was it version 2 :shock: and practically taught myself it in 30mins. There is/was another presentation package - can't remember the name just now - and it gave me no end of trouble to do some of the stuff that I can do/picked up easily in PowerPoint. Lotus 123, I used over a period of weeks and if I had to chose between Excel and Lotus 123, I will chose Excel any time of the morning!

Bottomline - yes, MS Office isn't perfect and Vista won't be perfect for a while, if at all. But, at the end of the day, they are human made products and if you can show me a perfect human being, I will saw you an alien. ;)

[Sagitta]

I actually don't trust the patches from Microsoft. I don't remember the exact patches, but there have been patches for xp that have considerably slowed down pcs at work and caused headaches that forced us to get rid of the patch. Now we almost never install patches before testing. And that is shameful IMO!

And I do want to see the file extentions. That's the one way I have of telling what a file is for with the way different programs use different icons and as people can change icons around etc. And I've discovered that this is one easy way to show non-tech savvy people what to do with what files. And it has worked.

[Pacion]

And I do want to see the file extentions.

I bet there were people who didn't want to see file extentions, until it was taken away as an "enhancement" :raisebro:

[Sagitta]

I bet there were people who didn't want to see file extentions, until it was taken away as an "enhancement" :raisebro:Perhaps. BUt I have to go and undo this "new" standard for every pc that comes undo my jurisdiction!


And never use a program right after it comes out is my advice. Does not matter who created it as the possibility of bugs are there. Let others figure out the mistakes and then enjoy it. I do that even for hardware and many other products. Just so people don't feel I'm attacking MIcrosoft.

[dgcasey]

:pI have an iMac.:p

I'm sorry.

Oh, I didn't say that out loud, did I?

;)

[dgcasey]

But I'm a proud owner of an iPod now. Hurray!!! That was my gift to myself for being good all this year ;)

And you work for Lord Gates? You're so fired! He will show up at your house, put your iPod under his wheels and make spaghetti out of it. Then tell you to buy a Zune.

;)

[Pacion]

Quote:
Originally Posted by chachachacat http://www.dance-forums.com/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.dance-forums.com/showthread.php?p=358397#post358397)
I have an iMac.


I'm sorry.

Oh, I didn't say that out loud, did I?

;)

ROTFL!!! :lol:

[Pacion]

And you work for Lord Gates? You're so fired! He will show up at your house, put your iPod under his wheels and make spaghetti out of it. Then tell you to buy a Zune.

;)

Hey! If the Zune's battery lasts longer than the iPod's, I will help Lord Gates!!! :mad: I first thought 13 hours was a long time. Now, it seems like the shortest time in the world! Even a Duracell battery lasts longer!!! :mad:

[quixotedlm]

And you work for Lord Gates? You're so fired! He will show up at your house, put your iPod under his wheels and make spaghetti out of it. Then tell you to buy a Zune.

;)

The Google headquarters has a world map on a computer screen, that shows a global view of the number of searches coming out of each place on earth. Guess where the brightest spot on NW United States is? You guessed it, its Redmond, WA :)

It's a less well known fact, but we are a very meritocratic bunch of folks. If we don't think its any good, we won't use it. If we think its very very good, but there is something better, then we'll use the better option. Hence the obsession with being the best, because besides sounding like a very noble rhetoric, not being best-of-the-breed won't even pass muster on the inside. Drives people crazy all the time!

[cornutt]

(Compare that with other OS'es, like most linux distros, that won't do common scenarios like watching a DVD well. )

Well, in fairness to them, that's because the DVD consortium will not release certain key parts of the DVD spec to Linux developers. Remeber, this DVD group is the same group that thought that region coding was a great idea -- there's something that I think we can all agree deserves to be flamed.

[quixotedlm]

Hey! If the Zune's battery lasts longer than the iPod's, I will help Lord Gates!!! :mad: I first thought 13 hours was a long time. Now, it seems like the shortest time in the world! Even a Duracell battery lasts longer!!! :mad:


I agree with Sagitta - I didn't buy a Zune because it's v1
(v1 = version 1 = the first release with as yet undiscovered 'issues' that will typically be fixed in v2, v3 etc. iPods are v5 now, or like they say it, '5th generation')

[quixotedlm]

I actually don't trust the patches from Microsoft. I don't remember the exact patches, but there have been patches for xp that have considerably slowed down pcs at work and caused headaches that forced us to get rid of the patch.

Works that way with every OS, not just XP. I've even heard of SP2 slowing down XP considerably... but that's generally not true.

But 'slowing down' is hard to define.But the reliability of pathches has gone up significantly. It's easy to tell by looking at the number of incoming reports, complaints, support calls and so on.

[DWise1]

:razz:I have an iMac.:razz:
I'm sorry.

Oh, I didn't say that out loud, did I?

;)

Actually, now with OS X I started to feel half-tempted to get one myself. Now that it has UNIX in it, there's half a chance of being able to do something useful on one.

My brother-in-law, a PhD and professional writer (albeit right-wing political stuff) has been using Macs since the Mac Classic. He bought an iMac with OS X and bought a new hP printer to go with it. Well, the driver that the printer had him load was for OS 9, so it never worked right for him. I went to the hP site and downloaded the OS X driver and took my WinME laptop over to his house -- the file was about 10MB and he only had dial-up, so him downloading it wasn't really an option. The Mac interface was very difficult to work with, mainly from having to guess where they hid everything (also an ongoing game with each new version of Windows that comes out). But I was able to fire up the ftp server, network my laptop to it, and ftp that driver to his iMac and update his printer. And because it was running UNIX, I knew that those capabilities were there.

Along the way, besides finding the command line (ie, the terminal), I also stumbled upon a text editor. Excited, I exclaimed, "So it does have a text editor after all!". "What's a text editor?" "It's for writing text files." "Why would anyone want to do that?" We were then interrupted by the loud sound of my jaw hitting the floor.

This is the guy who's been writing on a Mac both throughout school and professionally for about 20 years. In the same visit, they said they were totally mystified about that second mouse button, so I explained it to them and even demonstrated its use to them. They still don't get it.

So, for those customers that quixotedlm deems too stupid to use a computer, instead of screwing everybody else up, just let them get a Mac.

[Pacion]

I agree with Sagitta - I didn't buy a Zune because it's v1
(v1 = version 1 = the first release with as yet undiscovered 'issues' that will typically be fixed in v2, v3 etc. iPods are v5 now, or like they say it, '5th generation')

5th generation... and "they" at Apple still only give you 13hr battery playtime? You go on holiday for a week (or like I did, drop my bag and didn't notice for four hours that the iPod had switched on!) and have to keep remembering to charge up!

[DWise1]

I agree with Sagitta - I didn't buy a Zune because it's v1
(v1 = version 1 = the first release with as yet undiscovered 'issues' that will typically be fixed in v2, v3 etc. iPods are v5 now, or like they say it, '5th generation')

Is that why version 1 of Outlook wasn't labeled as "Version 1", but rather as the same version as the other apps in Microsoft Office (V6 was it? I forget exactly).

I remember that V1 (oh, excuse me "v6") had some strange problems. The current version works well enough for us at work (though when we moved the "web lacky" renamed me as "Dave" and I lost everything in the process -- well, we were able to retrieve some of it, but not all). But it never worked right synching up with my Palm Pilot and got even worse with the newer Palm, so now I've completely abandoned that function (now I have to manually update the calendars of Outlook and Palm Desktop -- gee, no way to save off the data in any useable format). Given the choice, I refuse to use Outlook or Outlook Express at home.

And, yes, I killed Clippy just as fast as I could. Stupid sucker kept preventing me from getting to the Help function.

[quixotedlm]

5th generation... and "they" at Apple still only give you 13hr battery playtime? You go on holiday for a week (or like I did, drop my bag and didn't notice for four hours that the iPod had switched on!) and have to keep remembering to charge up!

With the 80G video iPod, you get 20 hrs.

I worry less about battery life (13 hours is plenty for me) and more about battery performance and durablity, and number of charge/discharge cycles it can handle during the lifetime of the product. The only way to learn about it is by watching the product perform in the market for a year or more :) Hence iPod!

[Pacion]

I use about 5 hrs a day of battery life, at least, per day ;)

Okay, back to the merit of Vista :D

[Beto]

With the 80G video iPod, you get 20 hrs.

I worry less about battery life (13 hours is plenty for me) and more about battery performance and durablity, and number of charge/discharge cycles it can handle during the lifetime of the product. The only way to learn about it is by watching the product perform in the market for a year or more :) Hence iPod!
Speaking of iPods, I think some of you might find this amusing. ;)

If Microsoft designed the iPod's packaging:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod

:D

Even more interesting? Microsoft created that video in-house

http://www.ipodobserver.com/story/25957

[quixotedlm]

But it never worked right synching up with my Palm Pilot and got even worse with the newer Palm, so now I've completely abandoned that function (now I have to manually update the calendars of Outlook and Palm Desktop -- gee, no way to save off the data in any useable format). Given the choice, I refuse to use Outlook or Outlook Express at home.

Palm sync - Probably software written by Palm that 'plugs into' outlook.
Outlook <--> PocketPC/SmartPhone sync works flawlessly for me, and several dozen people I know personally :)

I don't use outlook at home much either. It's only fun to use Outlook when you have an Exchange Server running your mailbox. For normal imap/pop accesses, it's an overkill. I simply use web based email at home all the time. Even for accessing Exchange based email, OWA (outlook web access) is a much better alterntative to owning a copy of outlook.

[Pacion]

rotfl re the Microsoft iPod packaging video! At least, it shows they have a sense of humour towards themselves AND didn't Bill Gates help keep Apple afloat? Hmmmm...

[quixotedlm]

didn't Bill Gates help keep Apple afloat? Hmmmm...

dunno about that, but MS has invested plenty in Apple in the past, and I think still does.

[Pacion]

... yes, or something like that! I wonder how much, if any, say MS gets in the Apple design/technology? :raisebro: So, for all those who are pro Apple and anti MS, guess what. You may be buying Apple, as "designed/financed by Microsoft"! :twisted:

[Joe]

And you work for Lord Gates? You're so fired! He will show up at your house, put your iPod under his wheels and make spaghetti out of it. Then tell you to buy a Zune.

;)
Actually the iPod (at least the nano) is remarkably bulletproof:

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/nano.ars/3

And the newer nanos with the ****l case might be even more so.

[cornutt]

5th generation... and "they" at Apple still only give you 13hr battery playtime?

Well, both MS and Apple (and everyone else) are constrained by what is available in the market in terms of battery technology. We in the computer industry have a tendency to just assume that everything will evolve at the same rapid pace that computers do, but batteries are chemistry and Moore's Law doesn't apply to chemistry.

Believe me, it's got a lot of people in the industry frustrated. I'm working on a project at work where we are running into some fundemental limits of the battery technology that's available now. There are some technologies on the drawing board that might produce dramatic advances in batteries, but no one knows when they will reach the market or if they will even work in practice the way that theory says they ought to work. I recall about twenty years ago when everyone thought that lithium-ion batteries were going to replace every other type of battery on the market, in all applications including car batteries. But they ran into some fundemental problems with the chemistry that still haven't been solved today, which have limited lithium batteries to low-power applications until very recently. When we're planning to produce something three years from now, we can pretty much count on processors being available in 2010 that are X more powerful than what is available now. With batteries, we can't count on that.

[tanya_the_dancer]

Just a quick update - IE 7 interferes with some music software like Dell Jukebox. (And maybe some other software, too).

After a troubleshooting session with Dell I removed IE7 and guess what, Dell Jukebox is working again. The tech at Dell said that a lot of people are having problems with IE7.

On an ironic side, as soon as I uninstalled IE7 and restarted my PC, windows update kicked in with a message "updates are ready for your computer, click here to install ..." Guess what it wants me to install? IE7!

[Pacion]

Was recently upgraded to Vista and Office 2007. Hmmm. What can I say? Am not a Mac person - I don't use it versus having anything against it or having a preference for PCs - and find it 'interesting'. But also slightly frustrating.

Once I 'forget' what I knew how to do automatically under XP/Office 2003, I am having fun. :banana: But on the other hand, I am having problems with the printer - one of those multi-functional dinasours that need 3,000 people to move it! :lol: It may be a 'simple' thing to do with the drivers and I have called out the engineer but, the company is already saying they are not on Vista as yet :roll: so, I am guessing at this rate I will know more than the engineer in some respects!

One problem I am still having (which I had under XP and it may be to do with the printer) is that when I select and try to print several worksheets in an excel spreadsheet, the print settings are not setting for all the selected worksheets - I have to do each one individually! :doh: I seem to have a number of vague recollections of being able to set the print options for a number of worksheets in one go and they would print accordingly.

[quixotedlm]

i've seen that excel problem too.. i don't remember how i solved it, but that's not related to vista vs. xp.

[Pacion]

Phew! Thought I was imagining things! :lol: Well, if you should remember whilst sleeping tonight, would you mind jumping out of bed, logging on here and post the solution please ;)

(I really, really, really would like to know the answer :banana:)

[quixotedlm]

Phew! Thought I was imagining things! :lol: Well, if you should remember whilst sleeping tonight, would you mind jumping out of bed, logging on here and post the solution please ;)

(I really, really, really would like to know the answer :banana:)

it works in excel 2007, not sure if it will work in excel 2003 also.

Select all sheets (right click on one sheet and do 'select all', or Ctrl-click every sheet that you are interested in), then apply the print setup/page format. This should apply the settings to all selected sheets.

[Pacion]

Select all sheets (right click on one sheet and do 'select all', or Ctrl-click every sheet that you are interested in), then apply the print setup/page format.

This I do already, but it does not work... :( It is something I noticed/recall happening, only ever since I started having to use this particular printer. There are no others I can test/try it out on, to see if it is just something to do with this being an 'all singing, all dancing' printer which isn't - I am the one 'singing and dancing' in frustration! :lol:

[quixotedlm]

This I do already, but it does not work... :( It is something I noticed/recall happening, only ever since I started having to use this particular printer. There are no others I can test/try it out on, to see if it is just something to do with this being an 'all singing, all dancing' printer which isn't - I am the one 'singing and dancing' in frustration! :lol:

Have you tried SHIFT+Click to select the worksheets (instead of Ctrl-Click)? Just checking... if this doesn't work, then I'll have to install Excel 2003 on a test machine and give it a whirl..

[Pacion]

Have you tried SHIFT+Click to select the worksheets (instead of Ctrl-Click)? Just checking... if this doesn't work, then I'll have to install Excel 2003 on a test machine and give it a whirl..

Oops, just saw this. Ummm, no. Will give it a try. According to the engineer for the printer, it seems to be to do with the printer itself! :doh: Will try your suggestion though, just in case.

Re Excel 2007, yesterday, I managed to create a Pivot Table! :banana: Have not been shown how to do it before. Tried it earlier this year in Excel 2003 and didn't quite work as I thought/hoped it would do. With the one I did yesterday, it looks pretty good (!) and was able to figure out how to customise it how I wanted it to look, without it reverting to the basic layout everytime I re-freshed the sheet! :banana:

I am quite enjoying Office 2007 :bouncy:

[Ron Obvious]

They installed Vista in our university machines as well. I don't really mind it, but I still haven't found any improvements from XP. Is there any real reason to upgrade to Vista?
Sure, it has some visual changes, but it's an operating system: its job is to launch other programs. Who cares what it looks like? Is there some task that Vista does better than XP?

[Pacion]

Sure, it has some visual changes, but it's an operating system: its job is to launch other programs. Who cares what it looks like? Is there some task that Vista does better than XP?

Not a techie so can't really say ;) but from what I have experienced so far is that if you use certain methods to change a file name, a popup window appears and asks you if you really want to do this. In some cases when I have tried to change a file name, I believe I got a message that I have to be in Administrator mode to do so.

The benefit? Hopefully? Is that if you get a virus, or some other malicious software that want to rename your files etc etc (as I said, am not a techie, so this is my user's perspective ) then it is not so easy.

Similarly, with certain software, I also have to be in Administrator mode to check for updates, or even to download that software from the internet. In my opinion, it looks like Vista is alerting you that software is being downloaded to the computer and you have to let it know that you want to do this.

One downside - it does not always alert you in advance. Therefore, I have tried downloading particular bonafide software, it appears to be downloading, gets to the end (15 minutes later! - well, it seems like it) only to get a message saying that I have to be in Administrator mode to download the software :doh: Woe is me, when I forget to do this, because I then have to start from the beginning again. :rolleyes:

Yes, I do believe that there are people/virus writers out there trying to find the holes in Vista. But, let's see what happens.

Oh, and yes, I do find it more pleasing on the eye ;)

I also a love hate relationship going on with the fact that I can do a search via the Start Icon (the Windows logo) and it searchs EVERYTHING on your computer for the words, including your emails. I do not recall being able to do this in XP.

[quixotedlm]

improvements are plenty - esp. in security. i run vista computrers without a separate firewall or antivirus software and never get infected by virus/worms or spyware. it's definitely going to keep your computer running along nicely without you really needing to go out to circuit city asking for help to clean up the PC from spyware, only to realize that it will cost you $300 and instead decide to dump the PC and buy a new one for $400.

all this makes life easy for network administrators. every problem they don't have to deal with is one better night of sleep for them.

there are also some very cool technologies in vista which will start showing up on the web soon(er or later), like being able to download and run safe internet based applications that look and feel like local applications on your computer (instead of being html/web based).

eye-candy is an improvment :)

if you haven't tried speech recognition on vista, you should try it. it's gotten good.

if you like the sidebar, you've now got one more interesting feature to play with.

for me, the best thing in vista is the new start menu. i never have to navigate menus to find a program. just press WinKey+<type the name of app> and it shows up immediately. the search is very functional and clean.

live preview of windows is also neat, both in taskbar and in IE. The new integrated IE 7 with tabs works a lot more cleanly in vista than it does in xp/win2003. office 2007 kicks ass in combo with vista.

overall, the externally visible changes are not too drastic a change from xp, but the engine has gone thru a major overhaul and really performs well. wait for SP1 later this year or early next year (or whenever it's going to ship) and it will make vista's performance and reliability even better.

[quixotedlm]

On the flip side, it's been argued that every enhancement touted by vista was already available for xp thru third party software. even the eye candy improvements were available from Object Desktop Co., and in combination with a good firewall and antivirus software, it all worked nicely and just fine. And I have to agree with this argument. For an individuals computing experience, I can't honestly recommend running out to upgrade to Vista, but just get it when you purchase the next computer and Vista comes bundled withing.

For corporate environments and office use, I'd argue that all the enhancements to XP are still extra addons, and are non-standard, and can be configured in a plethora of ways to make life miserable for computer administrators. the out-of-the-box standardized configuration is something that makes corporate network administration much easier and there, vista is definitely a better choice over xp+several apps.

[Ron Obvious]

On the flip side, it's been argued that every enhancement touted by vista was already available for xp thru third party software.

I think you must be meaning Powertoys for windows XP, those are excellent and allow you to rid many built-in annoyances in windows, especially the focus stealing when starting a new application. Also the Powermeny and Powercalculator are excellent. I guess you can get those for Vista as well.

[Sagitta]

I almost never buy a software upgrade until some time has past. I don't fancy beinga guinea pig. My sister is actually going with dell for alaptop as she is happy so many are offered with win xp.

IE7 has some compatibility problems, as has the latest firefox update. I still haven't done it simply because some of the add-ons/plug-ins that I rely on just won't work with it.

[quixotedlm]

I think you must be meaning Powertoys for windows XP, those are excellent and allow you to rid many built-in annoyances in windows, especially the focus stealing when starting a new application. Also the Powermeny and Powercalculator are excellent. I guess you can get those for Vista as well.

besides powertoys, there are many many addons.

eg, avant browser, object desktop windowblinds (eyecandy), of course firefox, many free firewal/antivirus products that are lean/good, a whole bunch of other tools at http://nonadmin.editme.com/UsefulTools and so many more.

my only point is that doing this yourself is a pain :)

[Pacion]

IE7 has some compatibility problems,

With Vista? I haven't experienced anything particularly...