The benefits of Vista are neither evident nor proven
Subject: Slow adoption of Vista
"there is a huge reluctance on the part of punters to wrestle with Vole's incredibly bureaucratic, and unforgiving WGA"
I don't believe that WGA is even on the radar of the average buyer. The things that are, are:
1. For the ordinary user, Vista doesn't really have a unique sales
proposition. XP does just as well, and works;
2. Vista is widely thought of as buggy, and unsupportive of existing software;
3. Many home users own hardware doesn't meet Vista's minimum hardware
requirements - and they question, given the cost, hassle and risks of upgrading,
and the other points above, why they should spend the cash.
In addition, businesses face a huge outlay in retraining staff (particularly sysadmins), hardware upgrades or replacement, software upgrades to compatible packages, and support costs, if they move to Vista.
Unsurprisingly, the business community is extremely reluctant to adopt Vista, whose benefits are seen as neither evident nor proven, when they've finally ironed the bugs out of their XP installations, and fallen back to an inexpensive drip-feed support level.
Jon
Subject: Brits get chance to decide where lottery dosh goes
There is actually an IT angle to this story. A few years back the millenium commission had a public vote like this to see what had been the "best" millenium project. I think it was generally assumed that the Eden project would win but Sustrans turned out to be the surprise winner.
At a meeting of Bristol Diocesan Synod (!) the Bishop of Bristol used this to illustrate the importance of "connection" ... however in subsequent discussions some got up and apologetically said he had to disprove this ... his wife worked for Sustrans and basically the reason why Sustrans won was that while vastly more people visited the Eden project etc than used Sustrans paths the issue was that people obtained info from Sustrans mainly by the web and thus Sustrans had a large list of email addresses of everyone who had asked for info .. thus when the vote was started out went a large email saying "you've used Sustrans info in the past .. why note vote for us now"!
Thus result was heavily skewed by fact that Sustrans were the only organisation involved which has this sort of connect info.
I suspect the same may happen again ... unless Sherwood forest has had the foresight to be gathering email adresses in their carparks :-)
David Shepherd
Subject: Everywhere Girl
Hello,
Just in case you need more everywhere girl sights from top-notch academic
institutions, I've spotted Everywhere Girl here :
http://www.ethz.ch/index
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (German edition) website
Go on with the good work!
Yours sincerely,
Pierluca Borsò
Subject: Beanbag's comments...
I must agree with Mr. Beanbag on this one. People have been bashing MS for as long as I remember. It's about time to accept the fact that Windows and X86 are here to stay, weither you want it to or not. Now while I agree that Vista could have been better (notably in the area of gaming performance parity to XP) than what it is, it's still a pleasure to use and easy on the eyes -- to the point of where I no longer use XP Pro anymore.
Just like it's hugely succesful big brother, XP, people were bitching about the performance compared to Windows 98, but over time that changed and now it's Vista's turn to get the flak. People must realize that it takes time to get to grips with a new OS. You can't just squeeze out maximum performance and be bug free out of the gate. That's just being unrealistic. Preffered, yes, but that rarely happens in the software world. Is the Mac or Linux bug free? Nope. Was XP bug free even within the first (nearly a) year?! Hell no. Why did you think Vista would be?
Microsoft tried on this one, perhaps waaaay too hard, but they tried. Give them time and we will all be singing the praises of Vista and DX10/11. Because of the way the OS is built differently than XP, you just have to give drivers and software a chance to catch up, along with the usual optimisations and fixes to come over time, just the same as what happened with XP. Rome wasn't built in a day. I remember all too well all the issues when I first put XP on my machine. Same dish. My first experience with Vista was actually better than XP, so I think that's a good sign.
Anyhoo, other than letting the smoke from all those bogs affect your exceedingly short memories, keep making the Inq a (usually) great site to read every day.
Thanks,
G. Jaunese
Subject: Wikipedia more dangerous than crack
Hello Nick:
Interesting, especially since my Master's degree is in Library Science, although I currently work nowhere near a library.
Anyways, the debate about how useful or good Wikipedia is has been going on for some time in the library field, although it's often tied up in debates about Web 2.0 and how to make librarians relevant to modern youngsters via Second Life and MySpace.
Anyways, I've found The Wik useful for a quick lookup, but no more credible than asking the knowledgeable person around the corner; nine times out of ten the material is rewritten from the list of sources (usually at the bottom of the article) and if it's important I go to the sources as the final say.
My own spiel on misfactuation was looking up about wanted Al-Qaeda terrorists and noting one was supposedly killed in a battle in Western Australia by a helicopter gunship.
This didn't sound the Australia of Crocodile Dundee, so I looked up the original document and found the incident had taken place in Somalia.
So if anything, it goes to show that a public Encyclopedia based on the good will of man will get subverted by pranksters and those with an agenda.
Sincerely,
Scott Peterson
Subject: Cyber Monday is a marketing fiction
It was a term crafted two years ago by Shop.org, a representative for online retailers.
While online sales may be high on "Cyber Monday," it has to do with the fact that sales are high during every day of the holiday shopping rush.
www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2005/nf20051129_9946_db016.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Monday
Jimmy Wellence
Subject: You are the hate monger.
"Limbaugh and Hannity are well-known rabble rousing hate-mongers."
How progressive of you. How enlightened. I am so impressed. I know that the popular "in thing" to on the internet these days is to act like a good enlightened castrated liberal, but how about you hold yourself to a higher standard as a journalist and at least know something about the things you write before you write them?
No, so sorry, repeating what you read on the alt.liberal.progressive.popular.incroud.myspace.teen.enlightened newsgroup does *not* count. So sorry. That just might... and I stress "might"... get a pass with the pimply depressed teenager crowd who are aching to find acceptance. Adults, however, need to do a little bit better of a job. Do you follow me? Or should I have typed this in Èlêê?ê ?êx? with ACRs? ROFLAOAU!
Hein
Subject: Totally inaccurate article on PSST, CyrenCall, and 700MHz
Your article titled "FCC boss gives ex-Nextel man okay on 700MHz" is
sensationalist and factually inaccurate. Please see my submitted comments on the
entry. Neither was CyrenCall "awarded" any spectrum, nor did it have any say in
the constituency of the PSST. CyrenCall will merely act as agent for the
conglomerate of public safety groups that jointly administer
Schoell
Subject: If man is from Mars etc.
Ummmm, last I looked Mars was IN Outer Space, as we Earthlings see it,
anyhow.
Dan Swinehart
Subject: Everywhere Girl sighting
http://gradschool.rgp.ufl.edu/students/application-and-admission.html
Mike
Subject: AMD Radeon thingy interrupts normal wibbling
This is the kind of language I would expect from some pre-schoolers.
L Babcock
Subject: DARPA spends more then users
So... Ed Hinders claims that DARPA sends twice as much as Gamers on processors...
DARPA's spending for 2007 is $150million (Entire program budget) http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/FY07_Final.pdf
so if they spend 1/2 of that on processors ($75 million)
9 million WOW players... (Wikipedia) , 5 million computers (say 2 users per PC) 5 years cycle = 1 million upgrade every year... average upgrade $100?
75 Million for Darpa
100 Million for WoW players
Want steam users to take on NASA? We'll see who wins
A Johans
Subject: WTF?
WTF is he saying??
subject: 700 MHz. Gifts
Well said fellow BPO,ers your end. Your questions are good ones John.
Making hay off of F of X , equipment of use to spec. apco25 . 2 The data side can be supported by Cisco. the radio side by kenwood, icom. and others is different than say Erickson, Mot. but who is going to point out that drastic difference for use in interference metros ? contract policing, contract dispatching, contract (internet) criminals... Lets tell anderson cooper to keep them honest. thanks for the news that perks my ears, keep the cans on . cheers John, guys and gals. Saskatchewan Roughriders or
Winnipeg Blue Bommers , get you quid into the punters...
GerwingR
Bob
Subject: Spider launch
Lessons from the
difficult birth of the Spider platform
by Scott Wasson 4:56 PM on November 26, 2007
snip
But I've observed over the years that would-be clever PR people have an
uncanny tendency to change the terms on which they work with us, to change their
philosophy about product samples, at the precise time when the product they're
shepherding to market has the moldy odor of a possible stinker emanating from
it. We've seen this dynamic unfold time and again, yet the PR types—whose
average tenure tends to be
measured in months rather than years—continue to pull out this tactic at key
moments, as if it were smart, new, and likely to succeed.
Instead, what we got was a frustrating result in which the drawbacks of the
Spider platform components are generally clearer than their virtues, and we're
left wondering whether AMD can be trusted to make things right. We're also
unsure about the value of working with AMD going forward, given the apparent
change in PR philosophy. Things may be tough for a while, but AMD could learn a
thing or two from how Intel handled its rough times. Even in the darkest days of
the Prescott fiasco, Intel supplied reviewers with new product samples
regularly. The grace and class with which Intel handled itself cultivated
goodwill with PC enthusiasts, and that paid off when the time came for Intel to
recover its competitiveness with Core 2 Duo. Things may be rather difficult for
AMD for a period. The company would do well to handle its struggles with similar
grace and class.
snip
Sid
Subject: Keep the Windows Vista bashing please.
I just can't have enough of it, ignore the newbies who hate it. They can just ignore the news and go gobble themselves up for all I care.
Also agree that if it were not for gaming, I would not touch windows even if I was forced to.
Here is some funny experience I want to share with you:
I was in a train in Europe(won't say which country to avoid starting a flame war). The train has a pass selling machine inside, so you can buy them there. If you do not you will get a very expensive ticket.
To my amazement after I put the money in, it froze and showed some windows restarting. Fortunately it gave the bill back, and no police was in the train to give me a ticket for riding with no pass, but damn I was surprised they used blinking windows on a ticket selling machine, and the train is like 3 months old, so very recent model.
Compres
µ
Share this:
ShareBusiness Intelligence Software
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Enterprise Accounting Software
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Systems Management
I too remember when XP was new and it ran like a dog compared to Win98, but at least XP didn't force dodgy DRM restrictions and annoying activation schemes on you. And at least most Win2K drivers worked on it.

While Vista's performance and driver support may improve over time it's clear the DRM and activation are here to stay. So what's my motivation to upgrade? 

As a gamer DX10 might have been it, but considering yesterday's article which proved the early DX10 shots of Flight Simulator X were bullshit 

I currently have no reason to abandon the faster and better XP. In the long run I think Vista could end up the Playstation 3 of Microsoft.
A quick search of the eden project visitor count [http://www.cornwall-calling.co.uk/eden-project-cornwall.htm] shows about 1.2-1.3 Million visitors alone.

yet the bristol-bath bike path (a single sustrans project) gets 2M visits/year, though that presumably includes a lot of repeat customers.

In terms of #of visits, it is clear sustrans projects outdo the eden project. That doesnt mean they dont have good communications (all those regional cylists mailing lists), but they also have more popularity than you'd think. Which is why people are on the mailing lists.
I made the plunge , I bought Vista. And when loading the Op system I was thinking ,wow should I have done this after all that I have read?

Well I can say this, it has worked with everything I have, Hardware the sort, only a few older games had an issue. 

After a month of using Vista I set back and thought about it, I like it, it is easier to use and other than some of the games not working as fast as they should it is great to use. 

I can see where some with older computers will and have had issues and are angry about Vista but I do not see any change from XP to Vista that I did not have when I changed to XP Pro when it came out. 

Games did not run right on XP when it came out , they where slow and crashed a lot , we had to jump through hoops to get some of the best ones to run, But we did it.

And as time went on fixes where given to us and wow we love XP. The same is going on now. 

I have to wonder if most of the people complaining about Vista are the younger users , the ones that have not been around long enough to remember what it was like when XP came out.

I do know also that on my Linux machines that I take care of for some company's have issues like was told of above about a train ticket. 

Have to reboot for no known reason, or crash, Yes even linux machines crash. So when I see so much in the news about Vista it kinda makes me think about the user who is using it. Or when a statement is made that linux is better or XP is better by a user just how much computer time do they have?

I know that after 30 years of working on Computer Systems ,I have seen the same thing over and over . (The last one was and is better}. That is up to when they get all the Op system ironed out. 

Write this down , and the next Op system that comes out read about it and just see what you read. The same that we are reading now!

Reading this about how bad Vista is makes me wonder , just like Mac's do not get viruses , linux does not get Viruses. 
Yes they do. But that does not keep them from being touted as , Do not worry they do not get Viruses as no one writes them. 
If we did not get these new Op systems look where we would be at now, stopped dead in our tracks . We have to learn to stand the pain of going forward and learn how to deal with the issues till we get it fixed to the way we like it.
Vista's not so bad. People make a big deal about it and complain bitterly about it, ignoring the fact that this is how just about everything works. What was buggy and expensive last year is functional and cheap this year. Thus is the way of things.

Nice that some people are writing in to say such things. It gets really, really old to always have The Inq going on and on and on about how Vista is "DRM-infected" and "dog-slow" and "crippled" and "bloatware" and "spyware" and has an "abusive product activation" and such.

Get over yourselves. The DRM only kicks in if you're using a protected HD-DVD or Blu-ray disc, just like stand-alone players. It's only slow if you run it with 512 MB of RAM or less, and let's be honest, these days Firefox can eat more than that, and anybody would be mad to make a system with less than 1-1.5 gigs at current prices. If people are worried about Vista spying on them and using personal information they should watch out for Google--their entire source of revenue is based off of digging through your information to try and sell you stuff that they think best matches your interests. And abusive product activation? That's just nonsense--the average user gets this stuff pre-installed and never sees a word about activation, and the technically inclined user spends all of a minute going through that once when they do a clean install.

How about you do some fair tests yourselves and report on that, rather than just echoing the negative takes on why Vista isn't perfect in every way?
Its not that vista is bad, its that the performace is bad. I'm not sure exactly what I'm getting with vista. XP = 2GB, vista = 15GB???? Some one please tell me what I'm getting. DRM infection is not going to make me buy, it does nothing different, add on no new features. Its all glitz and glamor, 13GB of glitz and glamor, and a little bit of DRM, and WGA to piss you off a little. So I"ll wait until what ever comes after vista, or perhaps microsoft should release a performance version of vista DRM'less than you'd see a crap load of sales.
"If we did not get these new Op systems look where we would be at now"

Personally, i'd love to see the comeback of a stable low memory operating system, using standard shared libraries (not DLL hell) on modern hardware.

The one i'm thinking of was called Workbench, and ran on the Amiga :-p

The remake is a work in progress called AROS (http://www.aros.org)
I have heard the comment that XP early adopters had early problems, just the same as Vista.

This is simply not true. Most XP adopters were coming from Win9x and as such any of the early problems with XP were small potatoes compared with even the first release of XP.

The main problem with Vista is that the most important feature, the fancy new file system, didn't get in, and even after cutting out such a nice feature, the new OS has a whole slew of really irritating new features, bugs and teething problems. 

Microsoft should have waited six more months to release Vista. After waiting four extra years, what is another six months.

There is a lot of really kewl new capability in Vista, but unfortunately it has to reach at least 30% of the installed base before you see very many software developers taking advantage of these features.

There will probably be a Vista II release sometime next year and it will fix a lot of problems. i wonder if we will EVER get that kewl file system. With 1 terabyte hard disks, we sure need a easier to use file system.