4 ms·

Vista Kicks Ass

14 points by drm237 19y ago

Matt's take on Vista.

paulgb 19y ago
I think the point of the anti-Vista stuff is not that Vista is significantly worse than other MS OS, but that it is not enough of an improvement over XP for people to put up with the speed hit. It seems the people who hate Vista the most are people who use Mac OS or Linux anyway.
drm237 19y ago
I'm still divided on Vista. I've been using it for well over 2 years starting before the beta stage via an MSDN account. Lately, I use Vista, Ubuntu, and XP evenly throughout the day and XP is my least favorite. Vista has been more annoying then XP, but the added features (yes there are actually features worth using) make it worth it still. That said, Ubuntu is great, but I have had more issues with it on an old laptop than either XP or Vista which have both been on the machine. I think I am more willing to accept Ubuntu's short comings because I know it's open source, and it's what I expect. That said, my next laptop will probably be a mac, although which OS I use most (OSX, Vista, or Ubuntu) has yet to be determined.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  I always want to try OSX, but the ridiculous price and sub par hardware/build quality keep turning me away. All of my friends have Macbook Pros, had it not been for that I probably would have gotten one by now.
pg 19y ago
I haven't had to reinstall once, and with XP I typically would have 3 times by now. I had no idea MS OSes were so bad. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing?
- rms 19y ago
  The MS OSes are terrible. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing. More typical computer users just buy new systems when they become unusably slow after a couple years, which is good for Dell and the like. What gets me to stay is tablet PC support and font rendering. Linux doesn't have an application that comes close to Microsoft OneNote for note taking. I wish that Apple made a touch screen Mac and I will probably switch when they launch one. The font rendering on Windows blows away Linux and Mac, in my opinion. There is nothing so crisp as Windows standard font smoothing (not ClearType). Linux and Mac look incredibly ugly without subpixel font smoothing or other heavy anti-aliasing. I spent a while trying to figure out how to get Linux to render fonts better and gave up when it required a kernel recompile. Has anyone here gotten Linux to render fonts well without subpixel anti-aliasing?
  - bluishgreen 19y ago
    You are right on the font, Windows blows away while Linux blows.
    - rms 19y ago
      downmodded for being slightly profane? Linux font rendering really does blow.
      - nailer 19y ago
        Downmodded for lack of supporting arguments. Looks fine out of the box on every install I've seen of the current most popular distribution (Ubuntu 7.04). Also has worked fine on every distro I've used since at least 2000 (though back then I used Fedora, which at the time was a little ahead of the pack). Vista, incidentally, requires a reboot to increase the font DPI. Try it.
        rms 19y ago
        Yes, it looks fine if you have font smoothing on, but try turning it off. The underlying font rendering is really poor, the underlying font rendering for Windows makes everything look like a pixel font.
- wyday 19y ago
  > Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing? No. Reinstalling Windows is recommended by kids on forums - everyone else knows that a defrag suffices.
  - bluishgreen 19y ago
    Depends on usage. My grandma is happiest with Win 95. She never had to reinstall once.
  - drm237 19y ago
    Not sure I agree that a defrag will fix the issues. I will say that running anti-virus and not clicking on every link that says you've won $50k does wonders...that and using firefox over IE.
    - wyday 19y ago
      I agree; the users that complain about Windows stability (the ones that aren't Mac using journalists) are the type that install sleazy toolbars and slipshod freeware. It's like having sex with everyone in the art department and wondering why you have herpes.
    - mattmaroon 19y ago
      I defrag and run anti-spyware regularly. Use Firefox only, and never even see such a link due to adblocker. It's mostly the DLL nightmare.
  - axod 19y ago
    It's funny how much people these days think defrag does. Defrag does ONE thing, and ONE thing only. It speeds up your hard disk access a bit by making sure files are sequential. It's not going to fix all those driver issues windows gets, won't fix the crappy registry, won't remove all those hidden programs that start up automatically making it take 20 minutes to boot. It won't remove all the IE add-on bars that somehow got installed with some other software. It won't remove all the spyware/adware/viruses.
    - 19y ago
- bluishgreen 19y ago
  When I had 95, I would get up in the morning, take a shower, brush my teeth, reinstall the OS.
  - jsnx 19y ago
    I followed that routine for three weeks with FreeBSD -- the first time I had ever worked with a UNIX family OS. After I finally figured out the basics of partitioning a drive, setting the locale and time, I didn't 'reinstall' again until, three years later, I switched to Gentoo Linux.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Windows rot happens if you install/uninstall a lot of programs due to DLL hell. I suspect I have to reinstall way more often than my parents, but it does happen even to them.
  - Goladus 19y ago
    And even then it's probably only certain applications. Office plugins seem to be among the worst offenders in my experience. I remember problems with both IBM Rational and FileNet Panagon. Those are both huge software packages developed by big companies, so I don't know how much blame to lay on microsoft. Barring hard drive issues, I've never had to reinstall the OS on my personal PC.
- hello_moto 19y ago
  I've reinstalled my OSX 3 times since March.
- axod 19y ago
  Reboot hourly, reinstall O/S daily. Replace computer weekly.
- run4yourlives 19y ago
  No. Some people do wacky things on their PC's. I've got a laptop and a PC running XP, do a good chunk of development (granted nothing hardware related) and can't remember the last time I crashed, let alone re-installed.
dfranke 19y ago
Matt, here's the secret to buying from Dell: shop in their small business section, not their home section. I'm quite pleased with my Inspiron 9400.
- rms 19y ago
  There used to be a real build quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines but now some of the Latitudes are just black-painted Inspirons with marginally better support. Lenovo is the way to go.
  - dfranke 19y ago
    I'm not talking about Inspiron vs. Lattitude, I'm talking about the home line of Inspirons versus the SB line (9300 vs. 9400, when I bought mine). I find Lenovo's displays intolerably bad.
    - rms 19y ago
      Oh, ok. What was the difference between the 9300/9400 Inspiron when you bought it?
      - dfranke 19y ago
        I don't recall exactly, but there were at least two components -- the video card and wireless card IIRC -- that worked well with Linux on the 9400 but not the 9300.
  - stuki 19y ago
    ....And IBM Intellistations for desktop use. They're almost studio pc quiet, built like a powermac, and I have never had a single problem with one. They even ship with a decent keyboard. Just can't go wrong buying IBM....
    - rms 19y ago
      Cool, I didn't know they still made computers. http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US/IntelliStation_workstations.html http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US...
catfish 19y ago
Vista Kicks Your Ass... 1. Self-limiting software 2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation 3. Removal of media capabilities 4. Problem-solving prohibited 5. Limited mobility 6. One transfer only 7. Stealth Installs with Windows Update turned OFF... 8. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video 9. Windows Update file deletions of 3rd party software Reference: http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding_vistas_windows_licensing_disserves_the_user.html http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding... And thats just the EULA. Once you actually install this piece of malware you find that if you watch it with a net snffer, even while completely idle, after several days with no interaction, it is constantly sending stuff across the net. Try it for your self with Snort. Its spooky. If you value your privacy, the security of your company, and give a damn about protecting your investments, you will read the EULA for yourself before you rush down to the beach with the rest of the lemmings.
jsnx 19y ago
The author hints at a major issue with corporate deployments -- old machines. It's all fine, well and good that Vista runs on machines it shipped with; but many large shops have to turn down an upgrade to Vista just because the performance is egregiously bad on older machines. By extension, it is unwise for developers to assume that Vista will be there when they need it, making it unsuitable as a platform for the near future.

14 points by drm237 19y ago

Matt's take on Vista.

I think the point of the anti-Vista stuff is not that Vista is significantly worse than other MS OS, but that it is not enough of an improvement over XP for people to put up with the speed hit. It seems the people who hate Vista the most are people who use Mac OS or Linux anyway.

drm237 19y ago

I'm still divided on Vista. I've been using it for well over 2 years starting before the beta stage via an MSDN account. Lately, I use Vista, Ubuntu, and XP evenly throughout the day and XP is my least favorite. Vista has been more annoying then XP, but the added features (yes there are actually features worth using) make it worth it still. That said, Ubuntu is great, but I have had more issues with it on an old laptop than either XP or Vista which have both been on the machine. I think I am more willing to accept Ubuntu's short comings because I know it's open source, and it's what I expect. That said, my next laptop will probably be a mac, although which OS I use most (OSX, Vista, or Ubuntu) has yet to be determined.

mattmaroon 19y ago
I always want to try OSX, but the ridiculous price and sub par hardware/build quality keep turning me away. All of my friends have Macbook Pros, had it not been for that I probably would have gotten one by now.

pg 19y ago

I haven't had to reinstall once, and with XP I typically would have 3 times by now. I had no idea MS OSes were so bad. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing?

rms 19y ago
The MS OSes are terrible. Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing. More typical computer users just buy new systems when they become unusably slow after a couple years, which is good for Dell and the like. What gets me to stay is tablet PC support and font rendering. Linux doesn't have an application that comes close to Microsoft OneNote for note taking. I wish that Apple made a touch screen Mac and I will probably switch when they launch one. The font rendering on Windows blows away Linux and Mac, in my opinion. There is nothing so crisp as Windows standard font smoothing (not ClearType). Linux and Mac look incredibly ugly without subpixel font smoothing or other heavy anti-aliasing. I spent a while trying to figure out how to get Linux to render fonts better and gave up when it required a kernel recompile. Has anyone here gotten Linux to render fonts well without subpixel anti-aliasing?
- bluishgreen 19y ago
  You are right on the font, Windows blows away while Linux blows.
  - rms 19y ago
    downmodded for being slightly profane? Linux font rendering really does blow.
    - nailer 19y ago
      Downmodded for lack of supporting arguments. Looks fine out of the box on every install I've seen of the current most popular distribution (Ubuntu 7.04). Also has worked fine on every distro I've used since at least 2000 (though back then I used Fedora, which at the time was a little ahead of the pack). Vista, incidentally, requires a reboot to increase the font DPI. Try it.
      - rms 19y ago
        Yes, it looks fine if you have font smoothing on, but try turning it off. The underlying font rendering is really poor, the underlying font rendering for Windows makes everything look like a pixel font.
wyday 19y ago
> Reinstalling the OS is actually a routine thing? No. Reinstalling Windows is recommended by kids on forums - everyone else knows that a defrag suffices.
- bluishgreen 19y ago
  Depends on usage. My grandma is happiest with Win 95. She never had to reinstall once.
- drm237 19y ago
  Not sure I agree that a defrag will fix the issues. I will say that running anti-virus and not clicking on every link that says you've won $50k does wonders...that and using firefox over IE.
  - wyday 19y ago
    I agree; the users that complain about Windows stability (the ones that aren't Mac using journalists) are the type that install sleazy toolbars and slipshod freeware. It's like having sex with everyone in the art department and wondering why you have herpes.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    I defrag and run anti-spyware regularly. Use Firefox only, and never even see such a link due to adblocker. It's mostly the DLL nightmare.
- axod 19y ago
  It's funny how much people these days think defrag does. Defrag does ONE thing, and ONE thing only. It speeds up your hard disk access a bit by making sure files are sequential. It's not going to fix all those driver issues windows gets, won't fix the crappy registry, won't remove all those hidden programs that start up automatically making it take 20 minutes to boot. It won't remove all the IE add-on bars that somehow got installed with some other software. It won't remove all the spyware/adware/viruses.
  - 19y ago
bluishgreen 19y ago
When I had 95, I would get up in the morning, take a shower, brush my teeth, reinstall the OS.
- jsnx 19y ago
  I followed that routine for three weeks with FreeBSD -- the first time I had ever worked with a UNIX family OS. After I finally figured out the basics of partitioning a drive, setting the locale and time, I didn't 'reinstall' again until, three years later, I switched to Gentoo Linux.
mattmaroon 19y ago
Windows rot happens if you install/uninstall a lot of programs due to DLL hell. I suspect I have to reinstall way more often than my parents, but it does happen even to them.
- Goladus 19y ago
  And even then it's probably only certain applications. Office plugins seem to be among the worst offenders in my experience. I remember problems with both IBM Rational and FileNet Panagon. Those are both huge software packages developed by big companies, so I don't know how much blame to lay on microsoft. Barring hard drive issues, I've never had to reinstall the OS on my personal PC.
hello_moto 19y ago
I've reinstalled my OSX 3 times since March.
axod 19y ago
Reboot hourly, reinstall O/S daily. Replace computer weekly.
run4yourlives 19y ago
No. Some people do wacky things on their PC's. I've got a laptop and a PC running XP, do a good chunk of development (granted nothing hardware related) and can't remember the last time I crashed, let alone re-installed.

dfranke 19y ago

Matt, here's the secret to buying from Dell: shop in their small business section, not their home section. I'm quite pleased with my Inspiron 9400.

rms 19y ago
There used to be a real build quality difference between the Latitude and Inspiron lines but now some of the Latitudes are just black-painted Inspirons with marginally better support. Lenovo is the way to go.
- dfranke 19y ago
  I'm not talking about Inspiron vs. Lattitude, I'm talking about the home line of Inspirons versus the SB line (9300 vs. 9400, when I bought mine). I find Lenovo's displays intolerably bad.
  - rms 19y ago
    Oh, ok. What was the difference between the 9300/9400 Inspiron when you bought it?
    - dfranke 19y ago
      I don't recall exactly, but there were at least two components -- the video card and wireless card IIRC -- that worked well with Linux on the 9400 but not the 9300.
- stuki 19y ago
  ....And IBM Intellistations for desktop use. They're almost studio pc quiet, built like a powermac, and I have never had a single problem with one. They even ship with a decent keyboard. Just can't go wrong buying IBM....
  - rms 19y ago
    Cool, I didn't know they still made computers. http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US/IntelliStation_workstations.html http://www-132.ibm.com/content/home/store_IBMPublicUSA/en_US...

catfish 19y ago

Vista Kicks Your Ass... 1. Self-limiting software 2. Vanishing functionality through invalidation 3. Removal of media capabilities 4. Problem-solving prohibited 5. Limited mobility 6. One transfer only 7. Stealth Installs with Windows Update turned OFF... 8. Restrictions on your rights to use MPEG-4 video 9. Windows Update file deletions of 3rd party software Reference: http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding_vistas_windows_licensing_disserves_the_user.html http://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/19/forbidding... And thats just the EULA. Once you actually install this piece of malware you find that if you watch it with a net snffer, even while completely idle, after several days with no interaction, it is constantly sending stuff across the net. Try it for your self with Snort. Its spooky. If you value your privacy, the security of your company, and give a damn about protecting your investments, you will read the EULA for yourself before you rush down to the beach with the rest of the lemmings.

jsnx 19y ago

The author hints at a major issue with corporate deployments -- old machines. It's all fine, well and good that Vista runs on machines it shipped with; but many large shops have to turn down an upgrade to Vista just because the performance is egregiously bad on older machines. By extension, it is unwise for developers to assume that Vista will be there when they need it, making it unsuitable as a platform for the near future.