[LarryVale]

This will be quick before I go into a full rant.

It was on my new laptop when my service guy screwed the hardware in my 2 year old Laptop. I refuse to pay again for yet another copy of XP but, I am not pleased that I must be a beta tester for this piece of junk.

XP was just fine. I don't need transparant windows.

I was overseas months ago...I could not buy XP anywhere. MS made then send all retail copies back to them when Vista was born, like Rosemarys Baby.

 

[Redo]

I love Vista, but you have to have the specs to run it

 

[jmmtn4aj]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LarryVale /img/forum/go_quote.gif MS made then send all retail copies back to them when Vista was born, like Rosemarys Baby.

Huh? I can get XP and XP Pro here easily..

 

[LarryVale]

Not in South Africa you can't get retail XP or your couldn't last April. Found an OEM version finally but not at a store.

In Asia you can get anything.

I have 2gb of memory and a reasonably fast processor. I used to be able to have 25+ windows open with a slower proessor and 1 ig of memory. This locks up wih 15/18 instances of explorer.

That's progress?

 

[Joeywhat]

It's not Vista's fault...it's your computer's (or more specifically yours). 99.9% of the problems I've seen people had with Vista has been because there were problems with their computers, or they had not done something correctly.

I ran Vista for a while, although it was a cracked version. I just wanted to try it out. IT actually runs faster thanks to it prefetching to make use of your unused ram. A lot of people think this is actually a problem with Vista (as it can use A LOT of memory with nothing else running), when it's just doing it's job.

 

[Seidhepriest]

The general rule with Windows is... Run the oldest version that can run current apps, and don't bother yourself with wasting money on the latest bloat, until there's some kind of a fix for resource usage (in reality, pretty much almost all of resource hogs and annoyances of Windows NT can be turned off, though it usually takes days to properly fine-tune everything).

Currently that version is Windows NT 5.0 (Windows 2000). There're some apps (Adobe Audition, which used to be Cool Edit) that require Windows XP, but there aren't that many mission-critical apps requiring even XP, yet alone Vista.

If there's that one snobbish app which requires the latest Windows release, well, there's always emulation. And only if it can't be hacked to run on the host OS.

And in general, hack Windows into submission. Turn off WBEM logging and all the extra resource-eating extensible counters, adjust virtual memory management, disable all unnecessary bloat and all annoying visual effects. It can be arcane at times, but it's necessary for the thing to work correctly. As someone said, "Microsoft is a mediocre software maker, but an excellent marketing company". Well, turn off the marketing part in Windows, and leave the software to do its job.

Just the same about DRM and such - get Cowon players for music (they work as removable USB drives) or Rockbox if the player supports it; and of course, Ogg/FLAC as sound formats.

Only snag is, DRM is pretty much built into Vista's kernel, which means the whole thing's a "no-no" from the very start.

 

[LarryVale]

My point was twofold.

Now three.

It's a tool that I paid for that works less efficiently than the product that was already on the market.

Using a lot of ram is a good thing?

Who said?

The computer is much faster now than when delivered with 1gb of ram. Still less user friendly, meaning getting work done, not pretty things, than XP Pro.

For me...the customer. I think I'm the one thats paying and should not have to bend to help MS bottom line.

The *fault* lies in the product, not the customer, thats sold something that doesn't work as advertised. I suppose we are so used to assuming it's MS's right to extract money from us that soime can fault the user for not having the *proper* hardware. When they remove a good, proven, operating system from at least some markets leaving only a poorly performing product available, that is taking an advantage of a virtual monopoly.

I pay for my software.

South Africa is a small market and has poor consumer protection. I question weather that sort of behavior would fly in some european countries.

 

[krmathis]

[rant] /me don't like MS Windows (Viasta, XP, 2000, ...) either.

Luckily there are other operating systems out there. [/rant]

 

[Redo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LarryVale /img/forum/go_quote.gif My point was twofold. Now three. It's a tool that I paid for that works less efficiently than the product that was already on the market. Using a lot of ram is a good thing? Who said? The computer is much faster now than when delivered with 1gb of ram. Still less user friendly, meaning getting work done, not pretty things, than XP Pro. For me...the customer. I think I'm the one thats paying and should not have to bend to help MS bottom line. The *fault* lies in the product, not the customer, thats sold something that doesn't work as advertised. I suppose we are so used to assuming it's MS's right to extract money from us that soime can fault the user for not having the *proper* hardware. When they remove a good, proven, operating system from at least some markets leaving only a poorly performing product available, that is taking an advantage of a virtual monopoly. I pay for my software. South Africa is a small market and has poor consumer protection. I question weather that sort of behavior would fly in some european countries.

XP is severely lacking features and is far behind other next gen OS's. It's time to move on, and MS (and rightly so) is tired of being held back by catering to legacy support.

I find it hard to believe you couldn't grab a copy of XP. However, like it or not, LOTS of people love Vista and it's what MSoft is focused on right now. You could always explore Linux distros or Apple products if you don't like Microsoft. Plenty of people abandon Windows operating systems in favor of OSX and Linux.

 

[Joeywhat]

Like I said before, the problems you are having are not within vista, but within either your hardware, or maybe even vista being installed incorrectly (although I doubt that). There could be malware on your computer, too many unneeded programs, and a variety of other things.

As for RAM, OF COURSE it's good that vista uses a lot of it! If you have 2 GB of RAM, and during normal use only 500 GB is being used, why even have 2 GB? It's completely pointless to have that much. What vista does is take that unused RAM and put it to good use, making overall performance better. I can't say how many times I've seen people gloat about how little RAM they use...when in reality it's just showing how much money they just wasted on buying 2+ GB of it in the first place. It's like making a point of buying a car with a 6 speed transmission, then only using the first four gears.

You may also need to do some tweaking with Vista to get out how you want. You really can't just do a clean install and hope that everything is how you want. There are way too many features in Vista to have it be setup just perfect for everyone on the planet.

 

[ilikemonkeys]

Honestly, I never saw the purpose for Vista. XP has always been solid as a rock for me. Sure there are better OS's out there, but XP has always done what I need and well.

 

[Joeywhat]

I find Microsoft OS's to be pretty solid overall, and I like them...but it's the malarchy with how you can use them that gets me going. Apparently, with Vista you are only allowed to register the product three times. This means if you do any major hardware change (which could mean just changing the hard disc) you have to register again. After 3 strikes, you're out of luck.

That policy may have changed recently, but I doubt it. I would like to see microsoft let us BUY are software, and not LEASE it.

 

[Jon118]

I haven't had many problems with Vista. It's about as stable as XP, but it in concert with my laptop can be a very bizarre combination sometimes. Though generally those pretty far between and related to a piece of 3rd party software that just doesn't want to play nice. It's an alright operating system with some quirks, sure XP would probably be slightly quicker in some points, but I could get Vista to that speed by switching off some of the pointless effects and other little oddities it has.

 

[LarryVale]

I couldn't figure out how to delete one of these..

 

[LarryVale]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeywhat /img/forum/go_quote.gif I find Microsoft OS's to be pretty solid overall, and I like them...but it's the malarchy with how you can use them that gets me going. Apparently, with Vista you are only allowed to register the product three times. This means if you do any major hardware change (which could mean just changing the hard disc) you have to register again. After 3 strikes, you're out of luck. That policy may have changed recently, but I doubt it. I would like to see microsoft let us BUY are software, and not LEASE it.

OK I have a video store, I could go on for ages with a rant about software people, and the music, motion picture, computer software, and other products of the same type. All of them are trying to move the consumer of such products to a pay per use/listening/viewing business model as quickly as they can. The key word is consumer not buyer. When "buying" any of it, the purchase of a physical copy is only to satisfy an illusion that we own it. OK, we own the plastic its distributed on. THATS ALL.

Screaming with great indignation about the theft of their property is only a tool for the extraction of more money via assigning guilt.

To keep as many customers satisfied with the illusion that they are buying something while causing the smallest amount of dissatisfaction is how its done. The smallest means vs other competing items.

I can be argued each of us is only renting space on the planet too

Cash extraction is the name of the game.

Not an angry rant, just an exercise in calling a spade a spade.