Posts Tagged ‘windows vista’

Vista Fans Are Just as Bad as Linux Fans

The pattern is as sure as the sun rises: Someone writes an article about Linux vs. some other OS. Then someone will say how Linux is far superior to everything else on the market. Then someone will say that common tasks in Linux are difficult and it sucks. Then someone will insult their intelliegence saying they’re an idiot and doesn’t know how to computers since they can’t figure out Linux. Then the insults get more and more personal and more and more insulting. A few in the community around Linux are so passionate about Linux that it hurls insults at anyone who sees differently.

Over the past few months, I’ve been noticing another trend emerging. If you read the comments under any article about some sort of bug or problem with Windows (a very good recent example here), the very same thing seems to be happening with Vista fans. Take the first paragraph and replace every instance of Linux with Windows Vista and you have it. Early in its public life, Windows Vista was ripped on by almost everyone in the blogosphere and even popular media. Now it seems there are a few who are willing to hurl personal insults to defend their choice OS. It seems this could be a good start for Microsoft in their efforts towards rebuilding the community around their products after it was shattered by the bad Vista publicity (deserved or not).

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Feb 22nd, 2009

Microsoft Wins a Major Victory in ‘Vista Capable’ Case

The judge for the Microsoft ‘Vista Capable’ class action lawsuit has dismissed the class action lawsuit and told the individuals in the case they can pursue the case further on their own if they so choose. The judge stated that the plaintiffs failed to “adequately shown that the Vista Capable program caused widespread, artificial inflation in PC prices”. The judge did not, however, dismiss the case completely. She simply split the case up saying that the problem wasn’t a widespread problem, but there could be just cause for each of the individuals to pursue the cases individually.

In the case, a number of consumers went after Microsoft claiming that the “Vista Capable” stickers sold on PCs just before Vista was released were misleading since the PCs weren’t actually capable of running all of the features of Vista. The PCs ran the base OS fairly sluggishly and did not run Windows’ new Aero graphics effects.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Feb 19th, 2009

Microsoft: Hardware Vendors Be Ready for 7

This week is Microsoft’s WinHEC conference. The conference is aimed at hardware manufacturers to help them develop the best hardware and drivers for the Windows platform. According to APC Magazine, Microsoft is urging hardware makers to be more prepared for Windows 7 than they were for Vista. Microsoft appears to have learned their lesson that poor cooperation from hardware makers can really mess things up for them. Microsoft doesn’t want the assault it took when Vista was launched for the release of Windows 7.

This type of attitude from Microsoft towards hardware vendors has been showing ever since they started talking publicly about the next release of their Windows operating system. A beta of Windows 7 is promised in early 2009 with a release promised the same year as well. Microsoft stated that there will not be another WinHEC before the release. Since WinHEC is an annual event, that pretty well locks them into sometime before the latter half of Q4.

Microsoft is finally getting a taste for what Linux users have been experiencing for years: bad hardware support. Having to rely upon outside entities for your flagship product to be a success is a dangerous road to walk down. Luckily for Microsoft, they can push their weight around quite a bit with vendors to ensure things are in place and Windows 7 has a nice platform to launch from, but if hardware makers are as prepared for 7 as they were for Vista, they could be in for a lot of trouble. In its early days, Windows really took off because Microsoft made an OS that didn’t have to be prepared with a certain model or brand of computer. Remember that video for just over a month ago on Ballmer laughing at how the Apple didn’t have separate its OS from its device? Now, it seems that Microsoft is not wanting to sleep in the bed it made for itself.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Nov 6th, 2008

The OS Formerly Known as Vista

I’ve always enjoyed the “I’m a Mac” commercials that Apple has been playing over the last few years. When Microsoft finally came out with an advertising campaign to counter it, Apple got much more aggressive, however. I thought with the last few that they had gone a bit too far, but then I realized that with the “V Word” ad that Apple may have hit the nail on the head. Then the last couple of ads released have been hammering Microsoft over spending tons of money on advertising rather than actually fixing Vista’s problems. They have pretty much nailed it again.

It’s hard to find news coming out about Windows Vista any more. All the (Microsoft) technology news is about Windows 7 these days, it seems. Since I’m not one of the few who have actually gotten to play with the pre-beta versions, I’m going to have to go off promised features and reviews from others. However, what advantages do we get with running Windows 7 over Windows Vista? Well, what’s been promised so far is better performance, better reliability, a new OS X-like task bar (dock?), and multi-touch.

Okay, so they’re offering better performance and better reliability. I should hope it would do better than previous versions. I haven’t noticed any other operating system ad that didn’t say that it was the fastest or more reliable than the last. The biggest performance boost that I’ve read about is that Windows 7 won’t render application windows while the window is not actually being displayed. That’s something that should have been done with the first release of Vista, now it’s a pay-for upgrade.

Windows 7 is supposed to have a new taskbar that acts like the dock in OS X, even with a feature much like Apple’s “Stacks”. This isn’t much different from the Quick Launch menu in older versions of Windows, but it has a few additional features. I’ve always hated the idea of the start menu so this is definitely a welcome feature.

The big new killer feature that Microsoft has been talking about is its new multi-touch technology. Multi-touch technology has been around for a while in several products, both Microsoft (Surface) and others (specifically the iPhone and MacBooks). Microsoft has had its Windows Tablet Edition for several years and been a leader in built-in natural input on notebooks. The multi-touch technology is expected and a rather boring development, though necessary.

So what does Windows 7 give us over Vista? From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a pay-for feature that should have been a service pack. However, Microsoft’s marketing department has made it sound like a killer new OS, just like the Apple ads are saying. During this time of recession in the economy, Microsoft has found a great way of keeping profits high: sell features that should have already been delivered in previous sales. Microsoft didn’t even deliver on features promised to paying customers of Vista Ultimate. Why should we pay for a release that should be a service pack with a new theme? I think Apple had it right. The reason Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 rather than another service pack to Vista is to get rid of the Vista name. They have to add a few features to at least give the appearance of a new OS and then over-hype it to make us believe we’re getting something better.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (1) : Oct 30th, 2008

Tweaking Vista to be ‘Great’?

Recently OSnews linked to an article on tweaking Windows Vista to be “great” from PC Magazine. Now, Windows tweaking tips are all fine and dandy, but this article struck me as odd. The tagline of the article goes like this:

Windows Vista is everyone’s favorite tech punching bag, and not without reason. But the reviled operating system has some amazing potential and with some tweaks and a few utilities, you can do what Redmond didn’t: make Vista great.

Hmm, sounds a little funny to me, but let’s move on. An even more surprising comment comes in the second second paragraph of the article:

Surprisingly, most of Vista’s annoyances are fixable. If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and do some tweaking, you can turn Vista into a pretty great OS.

Wait, let’s back this fanboy train up. What just happened here? This seems awful reminiscent of comments I’ve read from Linux users of the days of old. We used to hear something like, “Linux is very powerful as long as you’re willing to learn it”. Windows fans for years have been scoffing Linux saying that it’s either too difficult or has annoyances that have to be overcome before using it, and that’s why you should continue to use Windows. So, when did this happen? Are we really reading articles from PC magazines about how Windows could be great if you know how to tweak it? And why hasn’t Apple (or some Linux distro) jumped all over this? 

The main reason that I would have for choosing a proprietary, commercial operating system over an open one would be so that I don’t have to tweak it to make it “great”! Of course, we all know (or will soon find out) that nothing comes to us for free. We either pay for the software by literally purchasing the license and/or support, or we spend the time to learn a community-supported operating system and “spend” our money that way. Given articles like this that PC Magazine thinks you need to tweak Vista to make it “great”, it amazes me that Microsoft is still a real contender in the operating system market.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Oct 22nd, 2008

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