Vista - A good step forward for Microsoft? [Closes 02/03/07]

[Mentor]

God, them adverts are annoying! They're on Myspace aswell, I thought they got rid of them for a while there... They disappeared yesterday.

Actually, there's a difference. Myspace's Mac advert says:

PC: I'm better at work stuff.
Mac: I'm better at fun stuff.

That from a Computer that cant play around 90% of all games... :rolleyes:

I find it fun. Making movies is not a time waster. Neither is making a really cool picture.

Agreed, both can be done with pc's just as well though "/ In some cases even easyer due to more 3rd party apps being up for the job in windows, so the adverts really annoy me. Dispite my own technical prefrances, the adverts seriosly do put me off mac, since the mac guy just comes accross as such an arrgoant ****

Although i suppose your right, this topic aint really about the deep seated hatrid of the apple adverts lol.

[F32]

xero please learn to stfu when you don't know what your on about the cracks are all patched already so thats your arguement gone, second its not actually anything like xp as its more enchanted in may differant ways so please shut up

i do know.

they are patched now, obviously.

[RedStratocas]

Indeed. Whoever created the adverts for Macs should of been shot at birth. At the end of the day, Windows don't need to make half wit adverts to make themselves look cool. As we said one day at college, the person playing Mac should be 50+, because 55% of Mac users are 50+ Not to mention, the person playing PC looks like he is doing good for himself, the Mac actor is a "hippy."

I will one day go for Vista, but at the moment, I'll wait for a good few months.

Actually the guy playing the PC is John Hodgemen (sp?), he's a semi-known comedian and journalist. He works on the Daily Show (greatest show ever) as a correspondent. Here's a clip of him on the Daily Show (with a brief joke on him being the PC), he's quite funny.

Actually Im not sure if you guys have the same commercials.

[Mentor]

Actually the guy playing the PC is John Hodgemen (sp?), he's a semi-known comedian and journalist. He works on the Daily Show (greatest show ever) as a correspondent. Here's a clip of him on the Daily Show (with a brief joke on him being the PC), he's quite funny.

Actually Im not sure if you guys have the same commercials.

he was on the old load of commersals. hes the best one, although apple got rid of him becuse everyone liked him to much, he got replaced with the annoying guy, whos in peep show if youve ever seen it?

[RedStratocas]

he was on the old load of commersals. hes the best one, although apple got rid of him becuse everyone liked him to much, he got replaced with the annoying guy, whos in peep show if youve ever seen it?

Oh that stinks.

[HUGECOOL]

I think it's funny that people ***** and moan that an ad promoting one product does so at the expense of another. Welcome to TV children. Ever watch a car commercial, to have one car pass others on the highway to make them look like crap, and you could've sworn you saw a debaged BMW, Mercedes or an Audi amongst the proclaimed losers? People can complain about the Mac ads all they like, but the simple truth is that this is how lots of companies run their ads. It's just a form of marketing, and it isn't going away any time soon. I'd say that the points being made in the ads are fundamentally correct once you look beyond the hyperbole. At the end of the day, Windows machines/OS's ARE typically built for more productivity-type work and Macs are typically built for more media-centric work, but maybe that'll change with Vista. Also, for the record, doesn't anyone remember this ad campaign from a couple years ago? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...s/default.mspx The site is different than it used to be, but if you look at it, it's all the same stuff - one note quotes on how complicated linux is and how great windows is. And their claim in 04 was that long run Windows-based systems were cheaper in the long-run than linux based systems. And linux people were in an uproar saying their data was misleading and the reports were by hired analysts and whatnot and eventually MS had to pull the data. So, Apple's not the only one who slants advertising to sell a product (not that that's uncommon practice in general, anyway). But I think this isn't that big of a deal. It's funny, it's tongue-in-cheek, it's advertising (not "lying"), MS has done the same type thing in the past, let's all relax and move on. And I'll stop there. Pointless turning the debate section into Mac OS X vs Vista. Technology section is taking care of that quite nicely.

Now, on to Vista..

A couple of days ago, I received an invite from Microsoft in my email to go to a Vista launch party but I had to go out of town. Turns out there was another party where I was going so I went. It was pretty well organized and I managed to win a copy of Vista Ultimate + Office 2007, so I can't really complain. ;p (Everyone also got a flash drive and some guy won a laptop. My flash drive broke a day later though. =/) So I'll write what I think about Vista thus far.

The new OS is a huge overhaul of XP. The UI looks very elegant and professional, despite the system requirements. There are many new features in it that I've found useful on this OS even though I use them on OS X on a daily basis, but having the features natively on another OS is also very exciting. It's not about who stole from whom, but how the features are integrated to work with one another and ultimately deliver a great experience to the user. Being a Windows user, the interface wasn't too confusing. Some options had new locations, so I had to hunt for them a little. The Instant Search was also very nicely implemented although I kept bringing it out on accident when I typed something. A minor annoyance, but I guess its PEBKAC for the most part. Installing drivers was also pretty easy to do. I was expecting 'New Hardware found omg" dialog windows popping up everywhere but the system just ran an update and installed my peripherals in the background- a very nice touch as well. Media Center also worked well for the most part. It closed down on me the second time so I had to re-open it. Overall, media features were integrated nicely and it was easy enough to navigate through. The UAC (User Access Control) is VERY annoying though. Luckily, I found a way to turn it off before completely deleting Vista off my computer. (Just go to Control Panel > User Profiles > Your Profile > Disable User Access Control.) But I suppose that's all for secuirty although I can imagine an amateur user going crazy with all the window closing just to delete a file. Useful, yes; Convenient, not really. But the solution was easy enough to find, although disabling it would just render the new secuirty feature useless. I also had Office 2007 and it's still giving me issues. Before installing Office, I downloaded Live Messenger to chat while I installed Office. Office finished installing so I just closed the installation window. After that, any change I made to Messenger (ie- changing DP, opening/closing messeger or something) will bring up Windows Installer (msiexec.exe). o_O So, that's very annoying to go through every time I open messenger, so I might just get rid of Office for now- I already have it on Mac. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. The new Start Menu gets kinda of annoying because I'm used to the expanding lists, but I'll keep it because it looks nice. DreamScene(s?) is also a new feature for Windows Vista Ultimate. It allows you to have a movie file (a looping mpeg or something) playing as your desktop background, like Quartz Extreme does on Macs. But it wasn't what I expected. Currently on my Mac desktop, I have this program called Soundstream that basically has floating particles which react to sound coming from a microphone. A little disappointing because it's pretty fun watching the animated desktop when playing music, or talking to yourself. (As a side note, I'd like to mention DreamScene only works with Windows Vista Ultimate. If you have Ultimate, just download the Ultimate Extras updates which installs this feature.) Voice commands are also pretty neat to use although there was difficulty getting some things done even after 20 minutes of voice training. (Kept getting, "What was that?" messages, so it got annoying- I turned it off.) Performance-wise, it barely touched the CPU and memory was pretty abundant, so browsing through it with all eye-candy enabled was pretty zippy. I wish I could've tried games, but that wasn't possible. The game I play, Silkroad Online, was unable to run on Vista which was pretty disappointing since I was thinking of deleting my XP partition and replace it with Vista. Since that's not happening I'll have to keep XP a while longer until support for the game is available.

Overall, Vista is a great step for Microsoft in order to make computers today more media-centric and user-friendly. I enjoyed using Vista, but not enough to make it my main OS. One of the main reasons people preferred XP over Windows 2000 was the compatibility with legacy software. Although Windows 2000 Pro offered this option, it was not really seen until Windows XP since it was available to everyone and not just businesses. Vista's support for *some* software is not yet available, so check to see if all your current XP software is supported before upgrading to Vista. The User Interface, although very nice looking and elegant, will be difficult for new users to adjust to. Some might find it frustrating to adjust to it because of the new layout of the options, but I suppose that'll vary from person to person. I'll give Vista a 7/10 for a vastly improved OS in both aesthetics and functionality, but in my opinion, uses too many resources for the mainstream to use on older machines. So it's a double-edged sword for Microsoft and consumers alike.

[Stephen!]

Well said

[DJ-Precocious]

Just got my new laptop with VISTA and now I definetly think it was a good idea, it looks great it works great and the way computers are made now means that most NEW! Laptops/Desktops can run vista smoothly.

[Mentor]

I think it's funny that people ***** and moan that an ad promoting one product does so at the expense of another. Welcome to TV children. Ever watch a car commercial, to have one car pass others on the highway to make them look like crap, and you could've sworn you saw a debaged BMW, Mercedes or an Audi amongst the proclaimed losers? People can complain about the Mac ads all they like, but the simple truth is that this is how lots of companies run their ads. It's just a form of marketing, and it isn't going away any time soon. I'd say that the points being made in the ads are fundamentally correct once you look beyond the hyperbole. At the end of the day, Windows machines/OS's ARE typically built for more productivity-type work and Macs are typically built for more media-centric work, but maybe that'll change with Vista. Also, for the record, doesn't anyone remember this ad campaign from a couple years ago? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserv...s/default.mspx The site is different than it used to be, but if you look at it, it's all the same stuff - one note quotes on how complicated linux is and how great windows is. And their claim in 04 was that long run Windows-based systems were cheaper in the long-run than linux based systems. And linux people were in an uproar saying their data was misleading and the reports were by hired analysts and whatnot and eventually MS had to pull the data. So, Apple's not the only one who slants advertising to sell a product (not that that's uncommon practice in general, anyway). But I think this isn't that big of a deal. It's funny, it's tongue-in-cheek, it's advertising (not "lying"), MS has done the same type thing in the past, let's all relax and move on. And I'll stop there. Pointless turning the debate section into Mac OS X vs Vista. Technology section is taking care of that quite nicely.

You'll notice microsoft also got ******* of when it did? Linux is better than both O/s's anyway (well possibly depending on the distro at least), its only flaw is its limited selection of device drivers "/ Just becuse microsoft has lied in the past doesnt make it ok for apple to do the same you know.

Now, on to Vista..

A couple of days ago, I received an invite from Microsoft in my email to go to a Vista launch party but I had to go out of town. Turns out there was another party where I was going so I went. It was pretty well organized and I managed to win a copy of Vista Ultimate + Office 2007, so I can't really complain. ;p (Everyone also got a flash drive and some guy won a laptop. My flash drive broke a day later though. =/) So I'll write what I think about Vista thus far.

The new OS is a huge overhaul of XP. The UI looks very elegant and professional, despite the system requirements. There are many new features in it that I've found useful on this OS even though I use them on OS X on a daily basis, but having the features natively on another OS is also very exciting. It's not about who stole from whom, but how the features are integrated to work with one another and ultimately deliver a great experience to the user. Being a Windows user, the interface wasn't too confusing. Some options had new locations, so I had to hunt for them a little. The Instant Search was also very nicely implemented although I kept bringing it out on accident when I typed something. A minor annoyance, but I guess its PEBKAC for the most part. Installing drivers was also pretty easy to do. I was expecting 'New Hardware found omg" dialog windows popping up everywhere but the system just ran an update and installed my peripherals in the background- a very nice touch as well. Media Center also worked well for the most part. It closed down on me the second time so I had to re-open it. Overall, media features were integrated nicely and it was easy enough to navigate through. The UAC (User Access Control) is VERY annoying though. Luckily, I found a way to turn it off before completely deleting Vista off my computer. (Just go to Control Panel > User Profiles > Your Profile > Disable User Access Control.) But I suppose that's all for secuirty although I can imagine an amateur user going crazy with all the window closing just to delete a file. Useful, yes; Convenient, not really. But the solution was easy enough to find, although disabling it would just render the new secuirty feature useless. I also had Office 2007 and it's still giving me issues. Before installing Office, I downloaded Live Messenger to chat while I installed Office. Office finished installing so I just closed the installation window. After that, any change I made to Messenger (ie- changing DP, opening/closing messeger or something) will bring up Windows Installer (msiexec.exe). o_O So, that's very annoying to go through every time I open messenger, so I might just get rid of Office for now- I already have it on Mac. Hopefully it'll be fixed soon. The new Start Menu gets kinda of annoying because I'm used to the expanding lists, but I'll keep it because it looks nice. DreamScene(s?) is also a new feature for Windows Vista Ultimate. It allows you to have a movie file (a looping mpeg or something) playing as your desktop background, like Quartz Extreme does on Macs. But it wasn't what I expected. Currently on my Mac desktop, I have this program called Soundstream that basically has floating particles which react to sound coming from a microphone. A little disappointing because it's pretty fun watching the animated desktop when playing music, or talking to yourself. (As a side note, I'd like to mention DreamScene only works with Windows Vista Ultimate. If you have Ultimate, just download the Ultimate Extras updates which installs this feature.) Voice commands are also pretty neat to use although there was difficulty getting some things done even after 20 minutes of voice training. (Kept getting, "What was that?" messages, so it got annoying- I turned it off.) Performance-wise, it barely touched the CPU and memory was pretty abundant, so browsing through it with all eye-candy enabled was pretty zippy. I wish I could've tried games, but that wasn't possible. The game I play, Silkroad Online, was unable to run on Vista which was pretty disappointing since I was thinking of deleting my XP partition and replace it with Vista. Since that's not happening I'll have to keep XP a while longer until support for the game is available.

Overall, Vista is a great step for Microsoft in order to make computers today more media-centric and user-friendly. I enjoyed using Vista, but not enough to make it my main OS. One of the main reasons people preferred XP over Windows 2000 was the compatibility with legacy software. Although Windows 2000 Pro offered this option, it was not really seen until Windows XP since it was available to everyone and not just businesses. Vista's support for *some* software is not yet available, so check to see if all your current XP software is supported before upgrading to Vista. The User Interface, although very nice looking and elegant, will be difficult for new users to adjust to. Some might find it frustrating to adjust to it because of the new layout of the options, but I suppose that'll vary from person to person. I'll give Vista a 7/10 for a vastly improved OS in both aesthetics and functionality, but in my opinion, uses too many resources for the mainstream to use on older machines. So it's a double-edged sword for Microsoft and consumers alike.

As much as im inclined to hate you for getting a free copy :p, it was a pretty good review, and its the UAC thats been putting me off updating, so far. Also im reluctant to switch, as most of the real innovation and added security comes with the 64 bit edition, which at the moment, next to nothing will actually work with, so im gonna wait till it becomes far more mainstream before making any moves "/ Also how did you manage to convince vista to install along side xp, without eating it? or has microsoft actualy learned to play nice with other O/S's with Vista?

[ThisNameWillDo!]

Yes I do think it's a good step forward.