Thoughts on Vista

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
Mike T. writes:

In case you are the last person in the known universe to have heard this,
Vista has been released. No, don't run out to Best Buy or Circuit City,
you
won't find it there. But Beta 2 (build 5384) is in "public" Beta,
meaning
that soon billions of computer users worldwide will be using Vista.

Billions?

Yup, Billions. Look at the U.S. alone. I've read that Microsoft is issuing
2 million product keys for the U.S. Each product key is good for up to 10
computers. There's 20 million potential installations in the U.S. alone,
and this is a world-wide beta, with an RC1 to follow. So after you figure
out how many machines will be running beta worldwide, double that figure to
get the number of machines that will be running vista. Could easily hit
billions, very soon.

You must have a lot of free time on your hands. And I presume you
either have more than two computers, or you don't run any production
on your systems.

Oh I have several computers. But the catch is, only 2 of them are Vista
ready. One of THOSE is a production machine. But being an IT manager, I'm
not afraid to tinker, even on a production machine. For the production
machine, I had multiple redundant backups made before I started. I couldn't
get Vista to run on it in any useful way (although Microsoft says it is
fully ready to run Vista), but had it back to XP within about 10
inutes. -Dave

"mike" wrote in message
news
I won't even read the rest of this trail:
if you did not by now understand that 'C:' is 'IT', then just drop it, or
use Linux.

Mike


C: is not "IT". Windows will default to installing on C:, if you don't
specify otherwise. But if you tell it to install somewhere else (H:, for
example) it will quite happily install itself wherever you specify.

What I thought was odd about the upgrade advisor is this:
C: had about 10GB of free space.
D: had about 40GB of free space
H: had about 240GB of free space
There were some other removable hard drives on the system, the smallest
having 80GB of free space.

But the upgrade advisor claimed this system was NOT ready for Vista, period,
even though the only problem it could find was that C: had less free space
than it was looking for.

As far as I'm concerned, that is a bug in the upgrade advisor. -Dave

Mike T. writes:

Yup, Billions. Look at the U.S. alone. I've read that Microsoft is issuing
2 million product keys for the U.S. Each product key is good for up to 10
computers. There's 20 million potential installations in the U.S. alone,
and this is a world-wide beta, with an RC1 to follow. So after you figure
out how many machines will be running beta worldwide, double that figure to
get the number of machines that will be running vista. Could easily hit
billions, very soon.

There aren't that many PCs in the world to begin with. And the very
vast majority of PCs in the world cannot even run Windows XP, much
less Vista. Some are still running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Oh I have several computers. But the catch is, only 2 of them are Vista
ready. One of THOSE is a production machine. But being an IT manager, I'm
not afraid to tinker, even on a production machine.

Tinkering on a production machine is a great way to become an ex-IT
manager.

For the production machine, I had multiple redundant backups made
before I started.

No matter what backups you have, you never tinker with production
machines.

Anyway, the whole notion of "Vista-ready" reeks of marketing, and
obviously is intended to benefit only Microsoft to the detriment of
its customers. Why on Earth would anyone want to throw so much
hardware out the window and get nothing in return? Just to ensure
that Microsoft can pay a dividend next quarter?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 16:18:38 -0400, Mike T. wrote:

The Aero interface alone
is worth the upgrade.

Why is that worth upgrading? Why would I want to run an OS that makes my
video card work all the time like it is "running a game"? Screw that ****e.

On 12 Jun 2006 16:54:37 -0700, "johns" wrote:


AutoCAD installed fine, but would not start at all. Heh!
3dMark2001 under MS driver about 18,200
under nVidia 64 bit driver about 18,900
switched to Classic Desktop about 19,100

Same benchmark on other hard drive in box which has
WinXP Pro .... about 27,000

AquaMark would not start at all under Vista.

Printers installed but then complained about drivers.

johns

Hmmm. Microsoft's marketing strategy is beginning to take shape.
Vista appears to be primarily aimed at those users who also opt for
preventive root canals.

Charlie

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:19:51 -0400, "Mike T." wrote:


"mike" wrote in message
news
I won't even read the rest of this trail:
if you did not by now understand that 'C:' is 'IT', then just drop it, or
use Linux.

Mike


C: is not "IT". Windows will default to installing on C:, if you don't
specify otherwise. But if you tell it to install somewhere else (H:, for
example) it will quite happily install itself wherever you specify.

What I thought was odd about the upgrade advisor is this:
C: had about 10GB of free space.
D: had about 40GB of free space
H: had about 240GB of free space
There were some other removable hard drives on the system, the smallest
having 80GB of free space.

But the upgrade advisor claimed this system was NOT ready for Vista, period,
even though the only problem it could find was that C: had less free space
than it was looking for.

As far as I'm concerned, that is a bug in the upgrade advisor. -Dave

Sounds like Upgrade Advisor signed up for Microsoft's mentoring
program and got Hardware Wizard.

Charlie

There aren't that many PCs in the world to begin with.

What world are you living in? I assure you that there are indeed billions
of ibm-compatible (so-called) personal computers in use in the world right
now.

And the very
vast majority of PCs in the world cannot even run Windows XP, much
less Vista. Some are still running MS-DOS and Windows 3.1.

Whoa. Granted, many systems are still running Windows prior to XP. But if
you look at the XP computers alone, they would account for billions of
potential systems to run Vista. There is no need to upgrade to Vista unless
you want Aero (the new GUI), but that won't stop many people from installing
Vista on systems that are not Aero-capable. Vista can be installed in an
XP-like mode (without Aero). Many people just have to have the latest OS,
even if they can only run a crippled version of it.

Oh I have several computers. But the catch is, only 2 of them are Vista
ready. One of THOSE is a production machine. But being an IT manager,
I'm
not afraid to tinker, even on a production machine.

Tinkering on a production machine is a great way to become an ex-IT
manager.

Unless there is nobody above you.


For the production machine, I had multiple redundant backups made
before I started.

No matter what backups you have, you never tinker with production
machines.

Funny. I never got that memo from myself.

Anyway, the whole notion of "Vista-ready" reeks of marketing, and
obviously is intended to benefit only Microsoft to the detriment of
its customers. Why on Earth would anyone want to throw so much
hardware out the window and get nothing in return? Just to ensure
that Microsoft can pay a dividend next quarter?

Actually, I see 'Vista-ready' as benefitting hardware manufacturers/vendors,
and actually HURTING Microsoft. I've actually run Vista briefly.
Realistically speaking, it takes a very high-end gaming system (by today's
HARDWARE standards) to get acceptable performance out of Vista. How this
helps Microsoft? By somewhat discouraging certain owners of
less-than-state-of-the-art hardware from upgrading to Vista. (Not very
helpful, from Microsoft's viewpoint). Meanwhile, I don't doubt that
hardware components (especially mainboards, RAM, higher-end dual-core CPUs
and high-end video cards) will be in MUCH greater demand over the next year
or so, directly related to the release of Vista.

Imagine if everybody suddenly felt compelled to upgrade their average
office/Internet workstation to a high-end gaming platform. That,
essentially, is what Vista is going to do . . . compel the average computer
user to want to own a high-end gaming system, as now the OS needs it, just
to run. -Dave

"Gank" wrote in message
news
On Mon, 12 Jun 2006 16:18:38 -0400, Mike T. wrote:

The Aero interface alone
is worth the upgrade.

Why is that worth upgrading? Why would I want to run an OS that makes my
video card work all the time like it is "running a game"? Screw that
****e.

You'd have to see it to understand. If you are running a large monitor like
we are, Aero is much better suited to that. Fonts/icons/etc. scale better,
making everything easier to see, read and manipulate. With XP, I have to
tweak the HELL out of it to make it somewhat usable on (for example) a 19"
LCD monitor. But Aero was quite usable at the default settings, as far as
the GUI is concerned. Even my wife noticed right away (and she's not a
computer person). She was impressed with Aero. It's not just eye candy, it
actually adds greater usability. IMHO -Dave

My BFG GF7900GTO is just about the top video card
on the market, and Vista crippled its performance by
nearly 30%. This box is a top game box, and yet
Vista struggled on it. I think Vista has a severe
problem with memory management, and that is why
the hard drive was hard on all the time. It sounded
just like Tivoli ... big Bro's keylogger for the Feds.
I put the system back to XP this morning, and it
was like a cool breeze on a hot day. What a relief.

johns

I saw that too. Still pictures look great in Vista.

johns