Concern: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

Response
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/20/windows-vista-content-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx

Rubbish.

http://dbw.ca.gov/AquaSmart/html/images/pirate.jpg
The problems outlined in the article won't be of any issue as hackers will probably royally screw DRM in Vista.

The sheer obnoxiousness of Vista's content protection may end up being the biggest incentive to piracy yet created...Perhaps Hollywood should heed the advice given in one of their most famous productions: "The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip through your fingers".

Best part of the entire article because it is so true.

Thanks, but I'll stick to XP. The sign over the CES Vista display read:

WINDOWS VISTA: Guaranteed to crash twice as often, but for 1/2 as long.

;)

[QUOTE=NautikaL]
The problems outlined in the article won't be of any issue as hackers will probably royally screw DRM in Vista.

[QUOTE]


I shouldn't be forced to commit a felony under U.S. law to output a store-bought HD-DVD through a Vista-based computer just so I can see it in a resolution higher than 540p. What a joke.

960x540 is "premium" content that preserves the "HD experience" while protecting digital rights? Give me a break.

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster.

They can stick Vista it doesn't offer me anything I really need, but requires much much more resources just to run.

From the article.
(A lot of this OPM stuff seems to come straight from the twilight zone. It's normal to have error codes indicating that there was a disk error or that a network packet got garbled, but I'm sure Windows Vista must be the first OS in history to have error codes for things like "display quality too high").

Oh.... at some point all these companies will just DRM themselves out of existence.

I'm actually going back to vinyl again. Getting really tired of the increasing compression of "superior digital".

Personally I'm in no hurry to buy anything HD-DVD or BlueRay.

Also: My XP pro computer has been running crash-free, every day since 2002 when I built it.
Yeah, I may have gotten lucky, but I build very good computers. So why would I WANT to switch? Been running betas of vista on another box. Pretty, but it offers me nothing new I need.

Most people are too eager to adopt the latest and newest thing. I have learned to sit back and wait it out, watch the fallout, and THEN make a decision. Save a ton of cash doing this as well.

Eh....

Marc

I have learned to sit back and wait it out, watch the fallout, and THEN make a decision. Save a ton of cash doing this as well.


Probably the wisest course of action.

Thanks very much for the link about the latest and "greatest" Microsoft OS.

From my point of view, Vista is not on my horizon.

Just hope you don't run any OpenGL applications either - dropping OpenGL support with vista is truly appalling.
"There are some programs that showed deeply disappointing performance.
Unreal Tournament 2004 and the professional graphics benchmarking
suite SPECviewperf 9.03 suffered heavily from the lack of support for
the OpenGL graphics library under Windows Vista. This is something we
expected, and we clearly advise against replacing Windows XP with
Windows Vista if you need to run professional graphics applications.

We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video
transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264
Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark
scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP.
There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate
solutions to this issue."

Yeah, they just lost the whole CAD/CAE market with that move...

I intend to stick with XP at least until MS pulls the plug on supporting security patches for it (probably around 2010). I have started playing around with Linux on the desktop (my firewall and server are already Linux) and it has come a long way but still a bit troublesome to get working to my liking (mostly hardware issues). I suspect I will graduate most computers to Linux though I will probably keep my HTPC Windows for the foreseeable future.

@Mark I like your sig, I am doing most of that other than the wind power (electric rates where I live are artificially low until 2010) but I purchase carbon offsets for that and my family's car/air travel.

I should change it a bit - I changed the power to 100% solar. Solar needs a boost here, more than wind...hell we have lots of sun, and the want to spend billions on nuclear, and bugger all on Solar.

Yeah, I can buy offsets for my car too. Been looking into where the money goes. But I've been riding my bike to work as well - cheaper than offsets :)

I purchased XP some time back, and it seemed to always have some glich or the other. And from time to time, it would automatically upgrade itself. And I know It must have downloaded over 100megs of upgrades just last year, and after each update I still don't know what the updates were supposed to correct. All the main problems I've been having with XP are still problems after day one..:rolleyes:

None of the previous versions of windows were ever a finished product. And it just goes on and and with us paying to be beta testers for Microsoft, for a product that has never worked right, and will probably never will. I'll stay with XP, at least I know what to expect from it, and we've come to know each other. I know when and what it won't do. And it knows I'm not going to waste time trying to fix it.

Mike, XP is an incredibly robust OS on the right computer. My machine has been running since february 2002 with XP Pro. It does NOT crash. I am running an ASUS P4C800E motherboard with a 2.6ghz processor, 2 gig of samsung ram, NVIDIA graphics card, (doesn't matter with unified drivers all are stable) 2 SATA 120gig seagates in raid 0 and an enermax 260 watt PSU.
The DVD drives and all the USB stuff is trivial. Point is, the computer's core is rock solid. I have not had ANY glitches. I learned after much grief and trial that a very stable powersupply will do more for the stability of your computer than anything else.

Also, it sometimes takes more than one install of windows anything to get a "solid" install. Don't know why, but it does.

I have run a beta of Vista for quite a while now. It's pretty.....
But it's not going on THIS computer.

Marc

I will stick with XP as well for the foreseeable future. I am sure Vista will be great, but I will let all of the companies work out their bugs before moving over. I don't think Datacolor will port their software for awhile, so it is definitely not going on the laptop.

Mike,
I have never had a problem with XP except for a virus which wasn't XP's fault. Whenever my dad has problems, I tell him to do system restore and he is usually fine. It sounds like you may need to do a fresh install. I run only XP with SP2.

Mark,
Did you see that episode of Modern Marvels about renewable energy? Most of it was old hat, but there was some new info for me. I thought it was interesting that if ten percent of Nevada was covered in solar then that would supply enough energy for the entire US. It makes one wonder how much energy we would have if every house in the US had solar panels on the roof. Since Germany has the most successful solar program, I don't think there would be any house in this country that couldn't produce electricity. Finally, Fedex runs their shipping hub in California totally on solar.:)

Vista brings up many issues, I have to demo a bunch of stuff about it at a nation sales conference in the near future. It's gonna be intresting knowing how I really feel about it. I've been running the enterprise RTM since before they released it do to agreements my company has. I'm not impressed to say the least they have more work to do on it. This OS gets in your face about oo many things.

Quote: "This OS gets in your face about too many things."

Excellent observation. I've been demo'ing the release version and not only does it not recognize common hardware (like Netware FA311 adapters), it's crapped on every app that I have tried to install. I had to set VLC and the Nokia appliance to XP compatability mode and Theatertek will not run at all. It is very pretty, looks just like my 4 year old Linux GUI :-)

I've been lucky with apps we have access to allot of Vista Beta software from major companies. But it's not like OSX where you only get prompted for certain administrative things. Seems like everything makes the screen dim and prompt you for access. Grrr...

Some of these reader experiences are hilarious - well actually depressing.
http://www.tgdaily.com/2007/02/02/windows_vista_reader_feedback/page2.html

Some of the headings from the article:

Vista is a hog

Vista hates Australians

Vista loves to bluescreen

Vista Hates Blu-ray

Vista hates XP

Vista hates you

It's the only conclusion we can really come to... This is personal. Vista just plain hates you. Even the "free upgrade" process is painful, as so many have said:

"The express upgrade process is unnecessarily difficult. My experience: I bought all my parts for a new system from a local chain. I paid $150.00 for XP Business OEM including FREE express upgrade to vista professional.

Return to the store for a "coupon"; 40 min round trip
30+ min in said store while they figure out how to provide the coupon (upgrade redemption form); actually a photo copy with reference numbers.
Complete the online process which as you stated is very involved.
it then prompted me for a payment method; so much for free.
provide my credit card and select regular not express shipping.
it then authorized my card for $31.51CDN. Wow, Microsoft pays a lot for shipping.
Now the page switches to the steps that must be completed to have my copy shipped.
Toward the bottom it states the specific instructions if you have an upgrade redemption form. This involves mailing the form and your receipt, no fax or e-mail option to the address on the form.
The form has no address!
Call the 1-800 number. Automated message states that it closed at 5:00 pm mountain time. Nice hours leading up to Vista's launch. I called the next day and got the address and have mailed the required info.
Now I wait 4-6 weeks.
Hopefully if I ever receive my "free" upgrade I don't have your install problems. I have never been a Microsoft basher but this whole process is a mine field designed to cheat you out of your upgrade. Never have I provided my credit card to a company, have it authorized and then have me jump through more hoops before they will ship the product."

Actually this is just depressing:
http://tgdaily.com/2007/02/01/opinion_vista_upgrade/

It is a given that tech journalists really need to upgrade, if they want or not, so I have been planning this move for about half a year, but guess what: So far, I haven't been able to upgrade to Vista and won't be able to ever upgrade my current, six-week old PC to Vista.