Bits Windows Vista review

With upgrades you mean hardware upgrades? Because that's the only thing I want to know and still haven't got clear info on.. Can you upgrade/change the hardware in your PC when using a OEM Windows Vista?

 

I am sorry that you feel that Bit-Tech has not given your personal pet hate the critical attention that you feel you deserves. You may feel the review is subjective, but then again, you are not exactly starting off on a neutral and balanced tone...

This review necessarily limits itself to initial impressions of the user experience. If you want detailed analysis of use in various productivity scenarios and different hardware environments, you may have to wait a bit. It was only released yesterday, after all (and tell me, how does being a long-term user of other OS's make you an expert on Windows OS? Assuming that Will Harris is not exactly a novice PC user himself).

OK, that is your opinion. Based on looking at static pictures.

Everything is "secure" for a given value of "secure" (think it over). Everything is "fast" for a given value of "fast" too. Don't believe what Apple says about that either... I guess everyone has their biases...

Of course MS could just release one version with everything, so people can then complain about having to pay for all those features that they don't need or use.

Oh yeah. Let's.

Not if you are renting the property. Then, all of a sudden, it makes perfect sense, and, is in fact common practice.

What people forget is that when you buy a film, some music, or software, is that you don't own it. You didn't buy the film, music or software (I mean, didn't you read the licence agreement? It is all that text just above the "I Agree" button); you bought the rights to use it. And there are conditions to this use, and by buying the product and using it, you are agreeing to them. You don't like it? Don't buy the product. Don't use it. Vote with your wallet. Simple as that.

And if it doesn't, you'll be the first to point out how this expensive, ugly, piece-of-crap software doesn't even allow you to play a DVD or MP3 track. Don't blame Microsoft --blame the RIAA or MPAA. They got Redmond over a barrel just like us, the end user.

Again, in your opinion.

Fight the oppressor! --sorry, couldn't resist.

DRM affects consumer rights. Basic rights are stuff like life, health, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Consumer rights are a.o. getting what you thought you paid for, and paying a price reflecting the economic value of the product.

I'm getting a bit tired of people somehow feeling that films and music are their birth-right or something. I don't know, perhaps it is because I am an old fogey who grew up without his own TV in his bedroom. But it seems clear to me that there is a simple commercial transaction going on here. Media producers sell you their stuff, under the understanding that you don't make copies that allow more people to use said stuff than paid for it. The measures to which they will resort to ensure that may or may not be objectionable to the customer. If they are, just don't buy their stuff. But you are not entitled to that music or film any more than I am entitled to that Porsche.

 

AHEM.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showpost.php?p=1414510&postcount=45

Let's not beat a dead horse.

 

Been using vista for a few days on my school laptop, and Im not sure that I like it that much. The lappie is a two month old Dell Inspiron 9400 with a 1,6ghz C2D cpu, 1gb DDR2 677MHz ram and a nVidia 7900 Go and vista runs way slower than XP on it. And games.. I like to play games while having math, and I get about 15 fps less in Faces of War while using vista, then when im using XP. I dont care what everyone else says, I just dont like vista..
Although, if they release a program where you can remove security stuff and so, like the one avalible for XP, I might buy it.. (But just one of the cheap ones)

 

After reading some more articles on Bit-tech and other forums, I think its pretty safe to say that most people that stay away from Vista is because;
- DRM... well, everyone will agree that it's not done on an OS
- Not a bulletproof driversupport (yet)
- So far it seems that games run quite a bit slower.

I do feel that I have to mention that it's pretty normal for a new OS to run somewhat slower then the previous version. After all, XP is 5 years old, and in those 5 years our hardware has become loads faster. Vista is at least 50% bigger then XP, with more features and graphic dooh-dah's. ANd it still needs a few updates to clean things up a bit, so it's quite normal for VIsta to be a bit slower.

But losing 15fps on a game, losing a healthy amount of driver-support/hardware-support and the fact that they STILL put in a DRM-system while more and more people start to either get rid of it or stop buying anything with a DRM on it... that's just impossible to understand. I really think MS is missing a few points when it comes to "user-friendly".

This "wow" hasn't started for me just yet

 

Through monopolising, leaving people thinking there's no choice. Take for example most school technical administrators are blind to anything other than spending 1000s of pounds on Windows licenses, when there other, free options available.

Oh really?

You have the wrong end of the stick, this could apply to any company. Companies, all companies lie. I was simply stating that you cannot believe everything you hear.

What is wrong with one edition with all the features? Seeing as all the discs are exactly the same, your serial key defines what packages to install.

So I have no choice? Maybe I want the advantages of HD-DVD without the insane restrictions.

Again, why can't the user choose their hardware to suit their needs, not those dictated to them by the manufacturer.

See above.

Not being able to feasibly accomplish that, I cannot test this. But I am paraphrasing from a report which suggests otherwise.

That is precisely the problem with DRM, you can't own software like that. "Don't buy the product" is the worst ****ing idea I have ever heard! Don't I deserve to be able to use a produce and not have my consumer rights compromised?

So the absence of DRM prevents you from even watching a DVD? Oh my, something must be terribly wrong with my computer...

I'm sorry, isn't a review an opinion piece?

Secure, as in what is (or should be) recognised as secure. Immune to viruses, no wanton access to system files, under any circumstances (features turned off or otherwise), and a half decent built in firewall.

Though you may say "OS X and Linux have had viruses," OS X has had 2, yes 2, which didn't propagate successfully, and Linux has similar circumstances. For example for a virus to infect my computer I would have to manually execute the following:

Code:

tar xvf malware.tar.gz
cd malware
./configure
make
make install

If at any point it asks me for my password I know something is wrong. If I type "sudo" before "make install" I will have to type a password, but not after I verify the quality of the program, and developers. Plus, being open source, at any point I can open up any of the files in the tarball, and read over them to see what they are doing to my computer.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I can also view the files before I untar them.

 

Upgrade

How easy is it to upgrade from RC1 (or any other beta for that matter) to the full version?
I want to upgrade, but I am a bit scared about losing all my stuff

 

Wonder if they have made any advancement in their speech recognition software

 

This article will definitely affect my decision in purchasing Vista. I am worried about that whole UAC thing that I saw in whatever beta version I used.

My only problem here is why must every review compare Vista to a OSX? The only people who care are Mac fan(boys?) and Microsoft haters. I have used a Mac (9.something) so I atleast am not just some ignorant "MS Fanboy" just talking.

Anyway, I will be getting Vista, but not anytime soon. I'm going to wait for some (hopeful) improvements and a use for DX10.

 

At the start of XP's activation system back in 2001 or whenever it seemed a very complex system, basically giving points covering the main hardware items (such as the CPU, hard drive, graphics card, etc) and you'd got to keep at least 7 points after upgrading. So changing the graphics card would lose a point, but changing it yet again wouldn't lose any more.

Now they appear to have simplified the system. A new motherboard is a new system, unless it's a replacement under the terms of the EULA, ie, the original motherboard has broken. Any other upgrades don't affect the OEM license.

See this thread for more.

I'll put off buying Vista (OEMFTW) until I next upgrade, as I'll need new mobo, processor, memory and graphics card; my two-year-old system is totally obsolete. Despite Da Dego's tree-hugger protests, it won't be too long.

 

Mate, I think you're lost. This isn't an Apple fanboys forum, this is a realist's tech forum. Everybody knows that they both borrow ideas off of each other, so if you're too blinded by Apple's ridiculous claims that Microsoft copy them all the time, then I think you need to reconsider your hobby.

 

Your consumer rights have not been compromised. The producer has made explicitly clear under which conditions you can use their product when you entered the transaction. You can choose to agree to this transaction, or you can walk away.

Don't get facetious now. Without Microsoft including DRM, Vista cannot legally access DRM protected media. MPAA and RIAA would see to that. So Microsoft would have to block it.

Exactly! So why do you accuse it of being subjective?

Apple sold iPods infected with viruses; so much for security. Linux is indeed powerful and capable, but very unforgiving of inexperienced users and hardware that is not configured just right. Microsoft does not have the luxury of catering to knowledgeable geeks with an intimate understanding of their well-tuned PC. It has to cater to Joe Bloggs the computer noob, computer phobic admin staff at work, and to people with the weirdest old setups. It has to work every time, out of the box. Linux does not do that. It is a very different ballgame.

 

really? sometimes i wonder...


anyway, i thought i'd give vista a go and stick it on a spare hard drive i had lying around to see if its worth buying
thing wouldnt even install
try by booting from dvd, freezes up trying to start installer
start setup in XP, reboot, bsod on starting the installer
nice.


not like im running any odd hardware either, nf4 + AMD X2 + x1900

guess ill wait for sp1 and try again

 

At no point did I mention it being subjective, you're putting words in my mouth. I said it was uncomprehensive.

You mean that virus that infected a Windows computer on the assembly line which then passed it on to the iPods?

See, Windows isn't so hunky-dory after all. I just did myself a nice new install of Ubuntu, and guess what, it is working damn near perfectly with absolutely no configuration. Sure you can if you want, and I will at a later date, but it is by no means necessary.

 

You must have a short memory

oh, look, and again...

 

I would like to know if vista consumes too much resources over XP, I mean that will my games run considerably slower on vista than on xp (I wouldn't upgrade if I will have to sacrifice the gaming experience). I have a 3ghz P4, a Radeon x700 pro, and 1gb of ram.

 

The game would be running much slower because there are no vista drivers for the 7900 Go yet. My laptop has the same problem (I have a 7900GTX Go).

 

A few points from some software engineer's perspective:

* Vista's kernel lockout is either a good thing or a bad thing. It's a good thing, providing it's effective, in so far as it keeps out the nasties. And it's OK as long as expert users can get around it when they explicitly want to, e.g. by modifying startup arguments etc. Why would you want to get around it? It's a matter of control: you own the hardware, you've bought the software, so who owns your computer? There may be any reason, from tweaking the keyboard driver (e.g. low-level Dvorak remapping for games that ignore the control panel) to permitting raw socket access (e.g. packet sniffing is essential for certain debugging situations). (It's a bad thing if either of these two things are not true.)

* From my perspective, DRM is about Microsoft enticing Hollywood to see the PC as a distribution platform. MS is in no way under the thumb of Hollywood - if they didn't do DRM, all it would mean is that Hollywood wouldn't target it. Hollywood doesn't have any leverage over MS, and nor does MS necessarily have any leverage over Hollywood.

What is in MS's interest is to create a DRM-enforced monopoly. Apple have successfully done this with iTunes + iPod for music, and MS wants to do the same with movies, via a two-pronged approach of Xbox and PC. In order to get Hollywood to distribute on the PC and thus get the lock-in, they need to bend over backwards to convince Hollywood that their content is secure. That's about the size of it. It's monopoly extension, the same way MS have always worked Windows.

What I really resent is what I see of the various monitors and redundant encryption going on, from what I understand it, even in situations where non-DRM content is being played back. How bad all this is remains to be seen.

 

An addendum to my last post: my main machine is has 4GB memory, Core 2 Duo (E6700 running at 3GHz), 8800GTX, running on 24" Dell 2407 rev. A03. So theoretically I fulfill the HDCP requirements.

The only Vista I'd consider getting is the x64 Ultimate edition. I could buy it tomorrow if I found a shop selling it (money isn't a problem for the software engineer ), but it'll likely be 6 months to a year before I consider doing that. There's a lot more evidence needed before any kind of quality verdict is in. Any rating of Vista before it's widespread is extremely premature.

 

My take: I don't care

I upgraded from Win95 OS2 to Win98SE because Win95 was a pain to install and had extremely poor networking and USB support.
I upgraded from win98SE to XP because XP offered native USB device support and more convenient networking.
I have yet to see any functional improvements offered in Vista that would warrant me adopting it.
If I want a more secure network, I'll install a more secure switch and router.
If I want a more organized file system I'll organize my files into folders.
If I wanted a more attractive interface (which I don't because it's pointless) I'd install something like windowblinds
If I wanted a TV OS I'd go with GB-PVR on-top of XP, or use MythTV

I want my operating system to be bland, fast, and functional. I don't play with or operate my operating system, that's what I do with all of the other software. The OS is just a facilitating system between your hardware and the software you use for play or work. I don't want a swiss army knife OS because I know I'm never going to use the corkscrew, or the kneedle, or the pathetically small saw, or the can opener. I can get by with just the basics.