Vista Woes push IT pros to look to OSX and Linux.

[alfredo]

Maybe it is time for MS to take a long hard look at their business model and their "good enough" attitude toward their products. Keep it simple stupid even applies to huge multinational corporations.


http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/11/19/it.turning.to.macs.linux/

Vista woes lead IT pros to Macs, Linux


Many IT professionals are turning to Mac and Linux systems to avoid installing Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system as an upgrade, according to a survey conducted by King Research. Of 961 IT professionals polled, a whopping 90 percent expressed concerns about migrating to Vista. What's more, over half of those surveyed said they had no plans to use Microsoft's latest operating system at this time. Macs are currently the most favored alternative to Windows with 28 percent of respondents saying they would most likely to turn to Macs, rather than upgrade to Vista.


Some 25 percent of those surveyed chose Red Hat Linux as a viable alternative to Vista, while SUSE Linux and Ubuntu each attracted 18 percent of respondents.

[wuushew]

1. unlikely

n/t

[CRF450]

5. Give it an SP1 or two, and it will be just as good as xp!

I have a new pc now with Vista, had only one driver issue and now its fixed. Other than that, it hasent given me any trouble.

[rAVES]

76. Have you tried watching a DVD on Vista?

[CRF450]

83. I havent played through a whole movie, but they run great just as they would on any pc

[Beelzebud]

138. Yeah I watch DVD's on my vista machine all the time.

Got a point?

[msmcghee]

141. I watch them all the time.

I now prefer a dvd in bed to the big screen in the living room. I've never enjoyed my Netflix subscription so much.

[JeanGrey]

268. Yup! And I haven't had problem one with it. In fact I haven't had

a problem with Vista at ALL much to my surprise.

[johnfunk]

86. "just as good as xp"? maybe ALMOST as good as NT...

It was a DISASTER when I upgraded my wife's "Vista ready" laptop to Vista. So I uninstalled it -- and it STILL ran slow. So I backed up all of her volatile data, e-mail and docs, wiped the disk, installed Kubuntu Linux, and my wife now LOVES her laptop.

[CRF450]

91. And what are the specs on that laptop?

In my experience, it takes atleast a decent mid-range pc with 2gb of memory to run Vista well. Dad bought an HP, the specs were AMD 64 4200 X2, 1gig of memory, 250gig HD, and onboard VGA. It did run slow, it had alot of bloated software, and just by idling it was using around 60% of that 1gig. He added another gig of memory, took out most of the useless programs, and that made a world of difference!

My new computer specs are...
Core 2 Duo E6750
3gb of memory
150gig 10,00rpm HD
500gig storage drive
Geforce 8800gt (soon to have another one for SLI)
Vista x64

I think some of ya'll should try a 10,000+rpm hard drive. It makes a bigger difference than just memory upgrades. Just about everything loads in the blink of an eye.

[EOTE]

127. Nice system CRF.

Mine is somewhat similar. I'm running Vista x64 on 2 systems I have right now, both with 4 gigs RAM, one has an OCed Intel E2180 (2.95 ghz per core) and the other is an AMD X2 5600+. My gaming rig is the Intel and it has the Geforce 8800 GTS 320mb card. Is your 8800GT the 256 or 512 model? Also, what do you think of it for the price? I was thinking of getting one, but I don't know if it's worth the upgrade quite yet. I love the fact that it's a single slot design and consumes less power (which I assume would make it a great candidate for OCing). And it seems like 2 of them in SLI (512 meg versions anyway) destroy an 8800 GTX, even the GTX Ultra. My rig right now plays Crysis in DX10 mode adequately on high settings, but not as smoothly as I'd like on higher resolutions. Anyway, it seems like the 8800GT hits the price/performance sweet spot right now, so it's really got me interested. How do you like it?

[CRF450]

181. Its an awsome card!

tomshardware.com awarded it the best vid card for the money, I think the last one was Geforce ti4400. I have 512mb one BTW. Price wise, they are selling from $270 to $310 which is over the msrp price, but its still a huge deal for its performance when it almost hangs with the GTX, and those are almost twice as much. Overclocking, I havent done that to mine yet since it is an OC version from BFG, but I heard they dont overclock very much cause the heatspreader and the fan doesn't dissipate heat all that well from the start, and it does get pretty warm.

An SLI setup would be badass for sure with these cards, the problem is, Crysis doesn't make use of SLI! I went to get the game from walmart the other day but it was sold out lol.

[EOTE]

282. Sweet. I definitely see one in my future.

I thought that SLI was simply not supported in the demo, but would be included in the full release of Crysis. Maybe if not, they're working on a patch. I'm either going to pick up an 8800 GT in 2008, or wait for the 9xxx series of cards from Nvidia. I can't believe how quickly graphics cards are evolving. Very cool. Thanks for the response.

[CRF450]

295. I hope they are....

Hell, according to what I'm reading on Crysis related forums, the game doesn't even make full use of multi-core cpu's! It would be more than playable if it took full 100% use of multi-core cpu's and SLI with the graphics maxed. I hope Crytech will make it that way in the coming patches like microsoft did with FSX.

I'd like to know why game developers are not doing that now, multi-core cpu's have been around for almost 3 years, it makes no sense why games in recient months are not supporting this.

[kansasblue]

110. johnfunk,

can you tell me more about Kubuntu? I went thru a Linux phase. Suse... I tried to love it but it had problems. Is Linux getting better with Kubuntu?

[Irreverend IX]

132. How long ago did you try Linux?

In the last couple years its usability has improved incredibly. Ubuntu Linux (www.ubuntu.com) is one of the easiest versions around, and it's compatible with the greatest range of hardware. Kubuntu and Xubuntu are both derivatives of Ubuntu that use different graphical interfaces than standard Ubuntu. I prefer standard Ubuntu myself. You can download it at ubuntu.com, and you can even make a live CD that you can boot from to test drive Ubuntu without actually installing it on your hard drive.

[kansasblue]

196. 3 years...

Do you think Ubuntu can support a broadband card?

[Irreverend IX]

199. Of course.

Linux supports most network interface cards, though you might want to do some Google searches with Ubuntu and your specific card model. There are entire websites that catalog devices and their level of Linux compatibility.

[JPettus]

217. Linux got better with Ubuntu

I went through a period of a couple of years where I installed and played with multiple Linux distros, Fedora Core, Simply Mepis, Mandriva, Red Hat but when I installed and set up Ubuntu I fell in love with it. I'm an IT guy and have to know how to work on Vista, so I bought an OEM copy and installed it on my new computer but after a short while I made it a dual boot computer running Ubuntu as well as Vista. I went ahead and installed the KDE desktop and run Kubuntu over 90% of the time and recently upgraded to the new version, 7.10 ("Gutsy Gibbon")

I think it's about ready for corporate desktop use, personally.

There are some specialty software packages that may not work well in a Windows emulator like Wine or Crossover Standard but the industry is improving on that every day. For the average user who needs to be able to access shares on a network server, print, use email, etc, it works very well.

And, it's free. The biggest obstacle, as the article above says, it that most support techs are more knowledgeable in Windows systems and would need retraining to work in Linux. As for users, it would take very little retraining for them to make the move to a Linux desktop. The Ubuntu desktop already works much like Windows but has more capacity in terms of desktops, stability and available free software that can be run.

Just my two cents.

[Xithras]

186. Many "Vista-Ready" PC's really weren't.

I bought my wife an HP laptop last year that had XP installed and advertised itself as "Vista Ready". The laptop turned out to have 1GB of RAM onboard, and the 512MB video card only had 256MB of dedicated RAM to go along with the 256MB of "shared" memory...meaning that Vista itself only had 768Mb of dedicated RAM available for its use. It ran like a dog when I finally installed Vista Ultimate onto it.

When I realized what was going on, I bought 2.5Gb of RAM for the laptop and swapped it all out. It runs beautifully now, but it certainly wasn't "Vista Ready".

[Renew Deal]

122. InfoWorld: "Vista SP1 no faster than stock OS, say testing experts"

This article came out yesterday...

Vista SP1 no faster than stock OS, say testing experts
The much-anticipated service pack doesn't boost Vista's speed much more than one or two percent, according to experts' test results

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/11/19/Vista-SP1-no-faster-than-stock-OS-say-testing-experts_1.html?

[Beelzebud]

139. Vista is only as "fast" as the hardware that runs it.

SP1 isn't about making it "fast", it's about making it more compatible.

I think the ones that hate vista are the ones that thought they could upgrade an aging PC with it. It wasn't made for 2 or 3 year old PC's.

[Renew Deal]

145. That's a valid point

I think it opens another discussion about what Microsoft is attempting to accomplish with the OS. They intend Vista to be the everything to everyone, compatible with everything old and new, operating system. Microsoft should ditch windows and write an OS from the ground up. They can include limited backwards compatibility, but other than that, they should ditch windows as it's written today.

I bet they could write something better than OSX or Linux if they tried.

[nadinbrzezinski]

153. You realize that Windows has quite a bit of Unix (see OSX) and BSD

see Linux in it?

Just that it is not well implememted.

[nadinbrzezinski]

151. We BOUGHT a top of the line gaming machine with vista ultimate

and I mean top of the line as in it also works great as a 3D rendering machine, when it decides to play nice with VUE, another piece of software that it is having issues with... and no we are not adopting

The problems I have had deploying things like dreamweaver have NOTHING to do with the computer, but all to do with the OS

Nor does the odd bug I found in Word '07. Granted that odd bug will not affect 98% of users.

[JPettus]

219. That's not entirely true

Lots of software issues can slow down an OS (spyware, poor programming, extra features to load, etc). It doesn't have to be hardware based. I've seen Windows software that is very slow to load because of all the things it has to do just to come up, including problems within Windows security in Active Directory.

Vista has considerable bloat and runs only slightly faster on my brand new machine than XP. Ubuntu runs *considerably* faster than Vista and is more secure.

I tend to think that Linux's Open Office.org has considerable bloat as well, but it runs as fast on my new machine Under Kubuntu as the new Office 2007 runs on my Vista machine. My other Linux software runs much faster than nearly everything else on my Vista install.

[awoke_in_2003]

128. "Give it an SP1 or two, and it will be just as good as xp!"

Like that is worth bragging about. Glad I only have to use xp at work :)

[JPettus]

220. And XP is the best OS that Microsoft has produced

I would recommend it for the basic, average user. Of course, I recommend Ubuntu as well if they are close to where I can support them, but my mother and sister are a long ways from me and not as easy to support, so for them, Windows is a better option right now. Give it time and I will have them switched to Ubuntu as well.

[upi402]

253. CRF450>>> why not a

crf250? Plenty of low end. Big triples?

[CRF450]

265. Triples are kinda scary but I like the power when I need it.

I do mostly trail riding, but I'm afraid if I had a 250 I would want more after a while, so I went ahead and bought the 450. I dont like dual muffler thing they got goin on now with the 250's, makes the bike and upgrading the exhaust more expensive. I think I'm gonna move over to a Yamaha. Those bikes are badass!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. My neighbor has a niche market

in his computer repair business now--taking Vista off computers and putting on XP.

[Atman]

7. My wife's office is switching to Macs; two frieds are going Mac for Christmas

We stayed with some friends over the weekend who have been all PC forever. The kids and wife are dying for Macs. Dad doesn't want to because he'll "have to learn something new." Ten minutes looking at a Mac laptop changed his mind.

My wife's office is another great example. A medical office that requires some Win software. Dual boot? Sold.

Microsoft fucked up big-time on this one.

.

[satya]

108. Have them look at VMWare Fusion -- no dual boot required.

I've been demoing it on my MacBook Pro and will definitely buy it. I need Win apps for work, too, so I run WInXP on my virtual machine, side by side with Mac OS X Leopard. Swapping back and forth is as simple as clicking an icon on my dock--no need to reboot. This software rocks!

VMWare Fusion

[puebloknot]

109. I have a new iMac, must run Windows for work, but just loaded...

...Leopard. So I'm in learning mode on the Mac side.

Question: I've heard about Parallels to avoid needing to reboot. How do you think it compares with this VMWare Fusion you mention?

[satya]

112. Have no personal experience with Parallels, but it wasn't Leopard compatible a couple of weeks ago

when I was looking for a solution. That may have changed by now. I would check some of the forums to see what people are saying about it. I think that it got good reviews pre-Leopard.

Enjoy your Mac! I'm a late bloomer, my first one was a used PowerPC G5 about a year ago and I got hooked. Now I can't live without iCal, the only calendar I've found that seems to work with the way my brain functions.

[JPettus]

222. We picked up a used Mac from the university surplus store

And my wife is enjoying playing with it. I haven't had the time yet but I worked with Macs at the last place I worked and they seemed easy and fun to work with. We may eventually go for the higher end Mac for our business uses.

[puebloknot]

292. Thanks for responding.

I'm hoping to move my whole small business operation over to the Mac side of my iMac. Unfortunately, the court reporting field doesn't do Mac, and I'm forced to use their Windows-based software. But I'm looking forward to converting to Mac. I first have to go throught their "Switch 101" module, to show how things are done in Appleland!

[negativenihil]

126. vmware > parallels

VMWare has been in the virtualization business a long time - that, combined with their proven track record in the data center leads to a fine product.

disclaimer, i have been using vmware for quite some time both personally and professionally.

[puebloknot]

293. Thanks! I'll check out VMWare before going with Parallels. nt

[soothsayer]

3. Vista's just a resource hog at this point, isn't it? I want to buy my mom a

little HP notebook but the fact that it's running VISTA is keeping me away.

[Clark2008]

10. Not really.

The "hogginess" of Vista isn't even noticed on a 2 gig machine - which most are now, so it's not an issue.

However, if you have a problem, here's a quick solve: use a thumb drive to allow Vista to run background items while you're using the particular software you need.

[arcos]

19. huh... it IS noticeable...

Maybe not for the average Internet browsing / word processing user, but I've personally had LOTS of problems with it. I'm seriously considering upgrading back to XP, and guess what, I'm not the only one...

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

22. Quite noticable

my neighbor hates it, and so does my husband, who is the IT guy for a non-profit foundation. Besides, I heard Vista gives Gates even more access to your computer and what you are doing. Is that tin-foil hat stuff, or do my husband and neighbor have the facts right on that?

[nadinbrzezinski]

71. yes they do, google NSA and microsoft vista

no tinfoil hatttery there

[MyNameGoesHere]

133. Can you please quit being deceitful about this?

Here are the keys. Pretty damn sneaky of them to leave them out in the open and able to be read huh? Also why only mention Windows certification by the NSA? Even though MOST ALL of the OS vendors have now sought out approval or have been approved.

http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/guidance_vista.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY

And why not mention NIST as a tin foil hat co-conspirator?.

Just admit it, your computer HATES you and you can't deal with it.





Type Bits/KeyID Date User ID
pub 1024/346B5095 1999/09/06 Microsoft's CAPI key <[e-mail]>

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.3i
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=ms8C
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Microsoft's Secondary (_NSAKEY variable, now _KEY2) CAPI Signature Key

Type Bits/KeyID Date User ID
pub 1024/51682D1F 1999/09/06 NSA's Microsoft CAPI key <[e-mail]>

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.3i
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=PhHT
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

[Clark2008]

38. I haven't noticed it in the least.

Personally, I think change scares the average person to pieces.

:shrug:

[arcos]

41. I agree, personally I love change...

I installed an illegal copy of Vista on my new computer about a month before it was released. When it came out, I bought a copy and installed it from scratch.

And after a year, I've had all sorts of problems... Vista sometimes decides to disable my right click when I have too many programs open, or suddenly applications just freeze. This can happen in Firefox, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Lightroom, Skype, OpenOffice... you name it. After a few (hundred) updates, it is a little more stable now, but that doesn't mean problems are gone.

If it wasn't for the beautiful, handy and mostly bug free Media Center I would have gone back to XP a long time ago.

[Clark2008]

46. Thank you for being rational.

I'm sorry if I snapped at you.

Many people on this board are making claims that simply aren't true and I got a little frustrated.

Yes... I'm sure there are bugs. I'm sure there are problems, but I'm also sure there were bugs and problems with XP when it first came out - and with any other OS out there.

I, however, haven't noticed anything, thus-far, but I was lucky enough to work at a company in which we were given ample information and training before Vista even launched and it makes dealing with these issues easier (I also use many of the programs you described above and haven't had the right-click issue you described).

If I had the time just now - and I don't - I'd post some end-user info that would make the Vista experience more pleasant. Maybe I'll have time to do that over the holidays.

Would that work?

[arcos]

55. That would be great...

I consider myself an advanced user... I usually build my own rigs, reformat probably a couple of times per year, play around with the partitions, etc. Still, there are things in Vista that just cause me to scratch my head. Networking for example... in XP I was just a couple of clicks away from disabling and/or enabling a network connection, or changing IP properties, etc. Now I find myself making at least 5 or 6 clicks. It is kind of annoying.

Not to mention the whole UAC thing, where you start ignoring all the popup windows whenever you want to install anything (or worse case scenario, you disable it altogether before it drives you nuts).

The list of my Vista complaints is long... still, I'm sticking with it hoping that somehow it will get better with time. But that's what I thought back in January, and what I thought back in May. I'm starting to get tired.

[nadinbrzezinski]

73. Well we got Vista well after it first deployed

since my hubby is a gamer

Guess what? Dreamweaver has to run on a SECONDARY account, which makes working on the site a major pain.

That is why I got my personal box a mac

[CRF450]

44. Its one of the reasons some people dont want it.

One of my friends who has it doesn't like it because many things are laid out in different places than XP. I see the difference too, but I'm still able to easily find what I'm looking for, so I have no idea what his problem is:shrug: It doesn't crash or hang up him though.

[Clark2008]

49. How could anyone not find anything on Vista?

I don't get that. All you have to do is hit the start menu and search.

No more looking through network trees to find programs/software/documents. I think that's great!

[JPettus]

224. Just because it's different

The first time I had to put in network settings on a new Vista machine I had to hunt to find where. It's not a difficult process and now they have a lot more wizards to make the processes easier but if you are used to just making a couple of clicks or a right click or two and finding it in the "old" place, Vista can be frustrating.

[nadinbrzezinski]

231. That goes for any new OS

I have played wiht XP, WIN ME, VISTA, UBUNTU, and now MAC... and the first day or so is spent doing the... ok how do I do "X"

In a mac the most confusing is the lack of the right click in OEM mouses.

I got a Kingston wireless and happy as can be

;-)

[puebloknot]

294. Am I dreaming? I bought an iMac which came with the Apple...

...mouse, and at first thought I didn't have right-click ability. Instead of an actual right button or left button, the mouse "rocks" back and forth. I can highlight and cut and paste and copy, using the OEM mouse. At first, I was most annoyed at the thing, but I've gotten used to it.

[Cobalt-60]

99. I'm having a Millenium flashback

I got a taste of that cr*p and returned to Win 98, where I still am.
I's supported the later MS Os types, but I don't want them.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

66. Please elaborate

Do you need to have a special kind of thumb/flash drive and if so, what do you need and how do you configure it to work in this manner. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Sanctified]

72. My lead developer just got a new Laptop with Vista Ultimate and 2 Gigs of Ram

And the system runs like a dog, his Delphi Development tools run like crap and he has to shut down all background applications and Windows effects to be able to use the thing for anything other than the desktop widgets and solitaire.

And to top it all off Microsoft has put an activation cap on Vista of 5 activations then you can no longer re-install it on your machine. Microsoft keeps shooting themselves in the foot, OS X and Linux are quickly catching up and it won't be long till they start to surpass Microsoft.

[Solon]

93. If you need to have at least 2 gigs of RAM to have an OS be responsive...

that OS was designed wrong. And no, I don't give a shit about the spiffy interface, if it can't stay responsive, then its designed wrong as well.

Here's an example of my desktop:



That's a DVD movie, by the way. You want to know my specs?

1.25 GHz AMD AthalonXP CPU
256 MB RAM
128 MB Nvidia GeForceMX Graphics card
Sound card, etc.

And my OS was not only responsive, but performance actually INCREASED when I enabled these spiffy effects. And this was almost a year ago, when XGL was, at best, a beta. To be fair, I did have it crash, once, but stability and speed has increased, with a couple of name changes. It still works beautifully.

[Xenotime]

140. Your screen is broken. Why is it like that?

[Renew Deal]

123. That's it's biggest problem

That it is unusably slow on new "Vista Ready" equipment. You either need jacked up HW or to stay on XP. XP is great, so that's a decent option.

[Atman]

4. How would you like to be the head of the Vista dev team?

Probably not getting an e-invitation to the Gates' Christmas Party.

.

[Richard Steele]

84. That would be Jim Allchin. He -RETIRED- the day they released Vista.

James "Jim" Edward Allchin was responsible for leading the development of a number
of Microsoft's operating systems, streaming media products and Internet services.

He worked for Microsoft for over 16 years before retiring in early 2007,
on the day that Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista
operating system to consumers.
Wiki bio:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Allchin



Check out this snip of from a memo he sent Bill Gates back in 2004:

"I am not sure how the company lost sight of what matters to
our customers (both business and home) the most, but in my view
we lost our way. I think our teams lost sight of what bug-free means,
what resilience means, what full scenarios mean, what security means,
what performance means, how important current applications are, and
really understanding what the most important problems customers face are.
I see lots of random features and some great vision, but that doesn’t
translate into great products.

I would buy a Mac today if I was not working at Microsoft. ... Apple did not lose their way. ..."


No, he's probably not on Bill's guest list these days! :rofl:

[ProdigalJunkMail]

6. the key phrase in your paragraph is...

"at this time." XP was not immediately adopted either but now runs on the VAST majority of business desktops and laptops.

sP

[Atman]

9. Denial is a beautiful thing!

Windows has always sucked ass. It's finally reached critical mass. But there will always be hangers-on.

.

[Clark2008]

12. Sorry... 'tis you who are in denial.

Windows is priced for cheapskate companies and is nearly compatible with everything.

I'm not defending it or downing Mac - I couldn't care less; I just happen to be in IT training and know that your accusation is not the case.

[Atman]

13. Accusation?

Windows main purpose is to keep corporate IT people employed.

.

[Clark2008]

20. I'm sorry - how's that a bad thing?

With all the jobs bleeding overseas, I fail to see how it's bad to keep corporate (or non-corporate) IT jobs here.

:shrug:

[Atman]

24. We used to call that "busy work."

So are you saying it's cool for MS to produce a POS product just because it helps keep people employed just to keep it functioning?

Wow.

.

[Clark2008]

39. Nope - I didn't say that at all.

In fact, I didn't even address the point about Microsoft....

But, if you must... it's not busy work. It's that network administrators are frustrated because they now must be developers to run most of the product line. Good or bad, this is the future. You need to know more about programming and development just to do network admin.

Don't bust my chops because you don't have the skills necessary - get them. Microsoft offers you free training dollars with the purchase of new licenses. There's no excuse.

Wow... yourself.

[Toucano]

30. It's a big waste of talent that drives up the costs of everything.

For everyone.

[Clark2008]

40. No it doesn't...

In fact, it's consolidating talent which drives the price down.

[Toucano]

42. Please.

If you tell me the name of it, I'd like to visit you in your upside down universe.

[Clark2008]

48. Please...

I described the problem above and you somehow missed that tidbit.

I'm sorry if network admins are getting frustrated that they now have to know programming and development, but it's simply the case.

It's not busy work - it's specialty work and it does require people to upgrade their education. It really does make it easier to use as an end-user.

[alfredo]

16. One reason for that is that it is pre installed on over 90% of all

computers sold. Very few copies of the OS will be sold over the counter compared to what will be bundled with new computers. They don't have to do a thing to become dominant.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

26. XP had one disticnt advantage

NO other MS operating system for 7 years, according to MS their next os will be out in 2009.. Many companies will skip vista all together..

[sendero]

75. There is a huge difference....

.. between swapping from the buggy crashy windows 98 to the stable XP that switching from the stable XP to Vista.

People just don't want to spend hundreds of dollars, have to deal with getting new drivers and etc. to switch to something that has nothing compelling to recommend it.

Vista is a flop and it will continue to be so.

[Renew Deal]

125. Who's forcing people to upgrade anyway?

If you are running XP, you should stay on XP. Anything older than XP should be migrated to something newer. 2000, 98, ME and the rest are severely out of date.

[Clark2008]

8. LMAO!!

This is on a Mac site, right?

I'm in IT training and I can tell you that this is absolutely not true.

Vista actually doesn't have as many problems as Mac would like - the problem is that other software vendors haven't updated their patches to meet Vista's requirements. That's hardly Microsoft's problem, although it is a problem for consumers.

[CRF450]

11. Exactly! Too many people are jumping on the bandwagon to blame MS for it.

Which is BS.

[alfredo]

14. I think it isn't just Vista, is it one screw up after another by MS. Look

at the complicated pricing structure. There's a lot to say for keeping it simple. Linux has a great pricing policy, Macs pricing is very straightforward. MS's paranoia, though well founded, gives the user the impression they are not trusted or valued. I've never been compelled to register a Mac or Linux OS. I can reinstall both a hundred times without having to justify the reinstalls.

I don't think Macs or Linux will topple MS, but MS should take to heart any sign of disaffection. When us customers bitch about a product, maybe, just maybe it is the product at fault.

[flashl]

28. Believe I've hear this before ... say 3.11->95 or 95->98 upgrades? n/t

[Clark2008]

50. You did.

:hi:

[Touchdown]

35. Then they should take a lesson from that other Redmond co.

Nintendo doesn't license software or anything on their systems (and they never did) unless they meet strict compatibility, and quality standards, because unlike MS, Nintendo takes ownership of fuck-ups, no matter what software company made them.

It's called customer service.

[Javaman]

15. And just where is that crazy dude nomad??

generally, these types of threads attract him, but I guess since it's not a positive article for microsoft, he has vanished.

[REP]

106. He's reinstalling Vista

As soon as it's running, he'll be back to tell us how superior Windows is and how much Apple sucks.

[Richard Steele]

189. Seems he's been MIA for about two weeks now...

Maybe he actually TOUCHED a Mac, and melted like the Wicked Witch? :rofl:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

264. Perhaps he realized his disgusting condescending attitude is actually detrimental to his cause. -nt

[Richard Steele]

267. Nope.

See # 259 below.

[L0oniX]

17. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD ...not for lamers and MS lackies

The best OS out there is BSD. OSX is a sort of clone of BSD and in fact BSD can be run on a Mac. Security is what you make it.

[alfredo]

31. I just burned a SUSe disk for my old Mac. I just have to

do some moving of files before making the change. I have Photoshop on the old one.

[L0oniX]

74. SUSE ain't too bad ...I used to use it a few years ago ...KDE is a nice desktop too

[alfredo]

77. I used Gnome most of the time when i first started using Linux. At

that time KDE was trying to look like Windows. It was butt ugly. It crashed a lot too. Since then they have found their own style. I would run Gnome but use KDE apps.

If you used Safari you are using technology from Konqueror.

BTW, there is now a Safari for Windows. It's in beta.

[tridim]

18. Macheads have been saying the same thing about windows for 20 years.

Yet market share across the industry has remained a constant the entire time.

Keep praying to Lord Jobs and maybe some day it'll come true! :)

[Atman]

25. No, market share has not remained a constant.

Do some research.

.

[BRLIB]

21. This $200 PC running gOS (based on Ubuntu) was sold out.

As of yesterday. Now back in stock.

Everex TC2502 Green gPC:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=7754614

Read the reviews:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/allReviews.do?product_id=7754614

OS:
http://www.thinkgos.com/

BTW - A perfect DU machine!

I just downloaded Fedora 8. Both i386 and x86_64.

[Lance_Boyle]

23. bullshit

Mac and Linux will not take significant market share from Windows on corporate desktops, regardless of how bad Vista sucks. The article is correct that corporate IT does not want Vista. That's why corporate IT demanded, and received, "downgrade" rights to XP. XP will be the standard corporate desktop (except for a few fringe Mac Hippy shops) until the next major version of Windows is released (windows 7, I think), and XP will only give up its share then if the new versions sucks less than Vista.

Let's see any corporate IT head suggest a switch to Mac and NOT get laughed out of the building when s/he tells the powers that be about that little 50+% increase in the required hardware budget.

[alfredo]

27. I don't think they will either, but MS could lose the market if they keep

screwing up. MS seems to be their own worst enemy. I think Linux could be the heir. Their ability to run on old and new hardware, Intel and PPC chips is a plus.

I think Apple will be happy with 10% of the market. They are doing quite well as is. Their market cap is double that of Dell and is larger than IBM. They don't need the headaches of dealing with businesses. The home and multimedia sectors has served them well. They want to be the Mercedes, not the Ford.

[Occulus]

45. One thing keeping Micro$oft OSes popular is gaming.

And Micro$oft knows it and made DirectX10 "Vi$ta only" for that very reason. It had nothing at all to do with not being able to get the visual effects that DX10 gives from within XP, it's only because they didn't want to take the time.

There's already proof of this out there. The Crysis demo has not three but four levels of detail for all the effects you can set in the game menu. The thing is, the highest is grayed out when running DX9. That's the setting that controls the DX10 effects, but if you edit the config files, replacing the 'high' setting with the 'very high' setting in each one, setting the game to 'high' detail will in fact show all DX10 effects when running DX9. I know this; I did it myself, but my PC just isn't up to the requirements for this game, so at those settings I got an embarassingly low framerate.

Nonetheless, it seems that all DX10 effects were working; 3D ocean, volumetric lighting, shadowing, indirect/ambient lighting, full HDR... it was all there, and in DX9 on Windows XP.

That, to me, smells like outright fraud on Micro$oft's part, for saying Vista and DX10 are required for those sorts of effects. It simply isn't true.

At any rate, Micro$oft knows about and badly needs the gaming industry. I suspect that if game developers started writing binaries for linux using the OpenGL API, Micro$oft's PC gaming market share would quickly begin drying up, and that's a big chunk of people (such as myself) who use both linux and Window$, or depend on Window$ for gaming only.

And of course, if anyone ever figures out a way to make DirectX9 and Wine best friends, I'll be dropping Micro$oft like a hot rock.

[alfredo]

65. I guess the XboX is a fall back for them, or in time a replacement for

all those pesky computer companies like HP and Dell.

If I want to game, I will go to my Playstation.

[nadinbrzezinski]

98. Not the same thing

and my hubby the gamer will quickly disabuse you of it, we have both a PS 2 and the gaming machine. He plays, I work on the mac

[alfredo]

120. The XboX has been hacked to run Linux. The PS2 ran Linux too.

I think older versions of Windows runs on the XboX.

[Occulus]

130. There's a small caveat to that, actually

Yes, the PS2 can run linux, but you have to have the Uber-Special Super-secret Linux for PS2 developer kit:

http://playstation2-linux.com/faq.php#Availability__When_Where_and_how_much

:grr:

The PS3 and the Xbox 360, however, are actually closer to a PC than they are to a gaming console. Once again, our technology is coming full-circle: once, our computers (think Commodore 64 here) connected to the TV and were single-box consoles with no user-replaceable parts; today, we're seeing high-end gaming consoles that can easily act like computers.

Talk about blurring the lines...

[alfredo]

135. PS3's are being used for folding@home.

They crunch numbers with the best of em.

[nadinbrzezinski]

143. Yes but they are limited in the network play

by design...

THere are a few network games for the MAC, but if you are an intense gamer... (hubby is... I should be since I write RPGs), your current choice is actually a windows machine.

If you want to play network games

There are games that work fine on your XP, what have you... and I'll admit it, the WII looks tempting, things like their bowling game looks interesting... but for intense PVP, you need a computer and a network connection.

And if Mac wants to really capture that market, they need to get more games....

I know, we looked at mac before we got the gaming machine... and in eight years I will probably look at mac again, and if mac has not gotten their act together with games... he will get another windows machine and I will use that win machine for my 3D apps

;-)

And will probably replace the laptop with another mac.

[alfredo]

147. Games have never been the focus for Apple. They have encouraged

game development, and are supporting some tools for games. It will take time and market share to bring the games.

http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2005/08/gamebuildingtools/

[nadinbrzezinski]

148. As I typed, if in eight years

they have not bitten the bullet and gone that way... we are getting another windows gaminng machine for the gaming addict at home.

Me... happy, since I get a top end 3D app machine.

[alfredo]

168. I'm satisfied with playing MacPuyo or Quinn.

My wife is a big Tony Hawk Fan and is unhappy that none of the newer versions were made for the Mac. She likes the Pangea games like Otto Matic
http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2001/09/ottomatic/ and Bugdom http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/02/bugdom2/ . She still plays old OS 9 games like Tetris Max and Jewelbox.

Check out Quinn. It's a pretty good Tetris clone for the Mac. It also has network play.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10063

Here's a list of games for the Mac


http://www.macupdate.com/search.php?arch=all&keywords=games&os=macosx

[nadinbrzezinski]

202. Thanks, I am a tetris fan

now should I download it?

Or stick to work

;-)

But my hubby is not satisfied with that. He plays the games taht do require top of the line hardware

On the plus side, I do get my 3D machine... and my writing machine is very good, and light and I am in love with the MAC's stability

There are some programs I wish it ran... but hey... that is what that other box is for

:-)

(and it runs vue, but quite frankly I cannot beat the refresh rate on that other machine with this one)

[alfredo]

216. the only thing it lacks is music. The game play is very good.

This is one of the early games for OSX.

http://www.aegidian.org/jeweltoy/

[nadinbrzezinski]

232. Now if I could find a stable mapper

or just keep pressing my art program.

I am actually finding things on it that are surprising.... Corel is EXTREMELY capable

Yes I could and will download GIMP later on... but Painter is surprising me. I can do my maps now on it.

;-)

And Dunjinni, the only thing available for MAC is not that stable (nor can I use them commercially)

[alfredo]

244. Here's another paint program you may like

http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html

Look for GIMPShop. It is a hack of GIMP to give it Photoshop style menus. Right now it won't work on Leopard.

Here's another painting/editing program that I used to use before Photoshop.

http://www.digimagearts.com/

Painter has always been a nice piece of software. I'm not a painter, so no matter the tools, my work looks like crap.

Propaganda is my thing

[nadinbrzezinski]

271. Cool

last night I was playing with the immage hose... and IT WORKED

I will email myself my profantasy art files... I own then and can be used for any mapping project and see if I an get them into the hose tool directory and make several directories for them

will explore the painter system. And if they work... well I can do my maps

Last nght I did an urban map in about 1\8th the time it takes me with the mapping software... and I was pretty happy with it.

If nothing else, it is GOOD enough for background for writing. I was also happy with the world map I did by just doing artwork

The effects in Painter are impresssive... and it behaves better on the macbook than it does on the vista machine... another program that has issues. At least I didn't have to buy another licence... why I still suffer through the dreamweaver mess

;-)

[alfredo]

274. How much does painter cost?

[nadinbrzezinski]

283. Here is the website

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1166553885783

And yes you can try before you buy.

And I paid what was it 180, for an upgrade.

It is not cheap... but I use it extensively

[alfredo]

284. That's $400 more than I have.

[nadinbrzezinski]

286. why do you think we don't buy photoshop?

[alfredo]

287. I bought PS before I was injured and put on disability.

Now I am on SS and there's little left for goodies.

[nadinbrzezinski]

288. I understand

trust me I do.

[alfredo]

290. As long as my old G4 works, I will have PS7.

As long as GIMP keeps improving, I have hope. You can now fade filters in it, and they have improved the selection tools. I don't like the unsharp mask, but now it can be faded, and that helps a lot.

[NuttyFluffers]

275. ooh! fun site. console emulators for OSX! w00t!

off to download video game emulators, kthankxbai!

YAY! Street Fighter for my mac! let me see if i can find recent emus of Capcom v SNK... F34R M1 Chun Li!

[nadinbrzezinski]

142. You play online games?

that is where having a vista or xp machine connected to the net comes in.

The capacity for network play is not as good on any of the small boxes

[alfredo]

170. I don't. Until recently I only had dialup.

[nadinbrzezinski]

204. There you go, there is where that box shines

in 3D, online games

[alfredo]

218. I know if my wife ever finds that Quinn can do network play

she will take over this machine.

[entanglement]

89. The reason given (by MS) for not retrofitting XP with DirectX 10

is that it relies on their new display driver framework (WDDM). So it's not a simple backport - needs kernel level changes. There is a good technical discussion of WDDM here

http://blogs.msdn.com/greg_schechter/archive/2006/04/02/566767.aspx

This is one case where I agree with MS; I've written several DirectX based applications (including the old DirectDraw interface) and the problems in exclusive (full screen) mode are a real pain in the ass.

OpenGL also suffers from some problems. Changes to OpenGL take much longer than those to DirectX, since the ARB has to vote in new features. That's lead to over use of the GL extension mechanism by impatient vendors. And the latest OpenGL release has switched from the usual state-based programming model to an object based model like DirectX. Programmers used to doing the things the old way are going to have to learn things over.

As for Wine, it will always suffer from emulation overhead. This is ok for regular apps, but a killer for gaming.

-entanglement

[EOTE]

149. Are you sure about this?

I've played Crysis on my system on both XP (with the very high detail crack enabled) and on Vista in DirectX10 mode. It did appear to me that the two versions looked different. Granted, I got lower FPS when I was playing in Vista, but in DX10, it did seem to look better than DX9 with Very High detail turned on. For one thing, it seemed a lot more realistic when mowing down trees or moving through grass and vegetation. It seemed less about how things looked while still, then how they looked in motion. Most of those features I see you listed, HDR, ambient lighting, 3d ocean effects, etc. seem to me to be available in the DirectX9 version by default. Not that I'm saying that DX10 has lived up to the hype as of yet, but I do think it has potential. Crysis is an unbelievable game, and pretty soon I should have the hardware required to run it at it's best. Who would have thought that a 320mb GPU wouldn't be up to task to get decent frame rates with high detail turned on in a game so soon?

[Occulus]

239. I have a single 512MB NV GeForce 8500GS

I'm building a new machine soon. I'll probably bite the bullet and get Vi$ta. I'm getting an additional video card too, for SLI mode.

Crysis and Bioshock run less than desireable on my machine; the UT3 demo runs beautifully. The Jericho demo chows away and is barely playable with the textures turned up to "acceptable". :silly:

My next PC is being built specifically for games like Bioshock, Crysis, and Spore.

[KharmaTrain]

29. Dying Of Improvements

I've heard and seen nothing but bad stuff about Vista and this fits in with my long-running policy of skipping every other MS OS...I went from Windows 2.11 to Windows95 to XP...never stopping inbetween as the bugs are worked out.

I'm about to pick up another audio streaming machine and my computer guy only loads XP...I didn't have to ask, he does a lot of commercial work and all his clients are asking to avoid Vista as well.

I'm about to convert a machine to Red Hat Linux as a personal web server...I've heard a lot of good things about the OS.

[arcos]

32. Vista should have been called Windows Me 2007... nt

[Zookeeper]

33. I've been shopping for a laptop and a Best Buy guy told....

me that for 30-some dollars, they will take all of the advertising and junk off of Vista which allows the system to run 30% faster.

I looked at getting one installed with XP, but it seems to be a big production. There was a big ad in the Mpls. Star-Tribune yesterday for new Dell laptops with XP installed, so maybe someone is catching on that Vista isn't everyone's first choice of systems.

[NorthernSpy]

34. LOL: Mac is "the most favored alternative", despite the majority opting for Linux instead...

You can tell this was written by members of the Mac cult:

Macs are currently the most favored alternative to Windows with 28 percent of respondents saying they would most likely to turn to Macs, rather than upgrade to Vista.


Some 25 percent of those surveyed chose Red Hat Linux as a viable alternative to Vista, while SUSE Linux and Ubuntu each attracted 18 percent of respondents.

Of course, Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu are all just flavors of Linux. So wouldn't that make Linux "the most favored alternative"?


28 people chose cake; 25 people chose chocolate ice cream; and vanilla and strawberry ice cream each attracted 18 people. So cake is the favored dessert!

[IDemo]

43. I prefer Mint ice cream

http://linuxmint.com/

[alfredo]

88. I'd like a Prius, but I opted for a Hyundai.

[LanternWaste]

36. I'm still trying to find out why I'm supposed to hate Vista....

I'm still trying to find out why I'm supposed to hate Vista.

I've been using it since early October and nothing has crashed, burned, exploded, gotten lost, reverted, preverted, inverted, extroverted, controverted or even alterted.

It's worked like a charm.

[Occulus]

47. How hard do you push your system? n/t

[LanternWaste]

63. video editing and video capturing...

I use Adobe's Premier Pro a *lot* for video editing and video capturing (editing mainly).

I'll routinely minimize it, open up my browser and download one thing or another, email and use a few other mid-sized widgets simultaneously, and there's no loss of performance that I can tell.

(Plus my guilty gaming pleasures...)

On Edit: I see you're a on a bit of a one-track path here with the 'how hard do you push your system' mantra. Is that a pre-assumed qualifier?

[americanstranger]

54. Same here.

Looking at the bottom of my monitor, I'm running Photoshop 7, Flash CS3, a text editor, Firefox (7 tabs open), Filezilla, Windows Mail (which I really don't like, but hey), and an instance of IM with my wife. Running fine.

I just bought this Lenovo laptop which had Vista installed, and I had the option to go back to XP (the wife works for MS and we could have rolled it back to XP without a problem) but figured I'd give Vista a whirl. Like you, I haven't had anything go bad in the month-plus I've been running it.

Just lucky, I guess. :)

- as

[Occulus]

57. How much RAM do you have installed? n/t

[americanstranger]

64. Dual Core PC, 2 GB RAM

- as

[CabalPowered]

56. Same here

I was astounded at the install time. 15 mins from disk insertion to working desktop. I haven't had any problems and I've been running for at least 9 months.

[Occulus]

58. How hard do you push your system? n/t

[CabalPowered]

69. Pleanty

High end games, Distiller, Photoshop, Indesign, Visio, dbases, Fireworks, IE, Firefox, Office, Prepress RIP, remote desktop. And notepad. I run a 30" Dell monitor with an nvidia 7950 gx2 vid card, duo core proc, raid, 4gb ram, creative audigy sound card.

[ReverendDeuce]

61. I agree, but my system specs have something to do with it...

Quad-core with 8GB of RAM running Vista x64. Also dual 8800GTX Ultra video cards in SLI...

That might solve performance problems.

[Deja Q]

82. Well, it's 7/10 for me. I've had a couple issues...

the only biggie was how upgrading the video driver caused WGA to blow up (good grief).

I'm upgrading to a new system board (and superior Intel technology) shortly, and we'll see how that cooperates.

[Neshanic]

97. The Macists smell blood, and their intense hatred of anything Microsoft.

I have not been completely enamored of Vista, but the problems that I have had are because HP, and Adobe could not get their act together when it first came out.

I have had the same experience you have had. Stable, smooth, and very nice. I also work my machine hard with the programs I run.

[Atman]

116. Do you realize how stupid that sounds?

Do you get the slightest cringe when people say your political views are based solely on your "intense hatred of Bush?" It is a juvenile argument, and it discounts any actual user experience as a basis for our opinion. You can have your opinion, I have mine. But please don't say mine is base on nothing more than an intense hatred of anything Microsoft. That is just plain lame, and a total cop-out for those without any real argument.

.

[Neshanic]

161. Do you realize how idiotic the catch all "get a Mac" sounds from people here

that never ventured into a large office environment like an engineering, planning, architecture, or landscape architecture firm and actually understand how we do our work? How PC's are the backbone of the majority of offices? How in everyday life we go through the work environment doing just fine on PC's? The absurdity of telling people with a hundred machines with XP to "just go Mac".

[Atman]

193. Another one who is big on assumptions, short on facts.

I've never ventured into a large office environment? Do tell! I was a one-man MIS department in the home office of the second largest specialty retailer in America, with 1800 stores. It was an entirely PC shop, 1500 users, until I convinced them to "go Mac" in certain departments. After a six-month fight, during which they offered to purchase entirely useless (for my needs) CAD systems rather than introduce Macs into the mix, they eventually allowed me to order ONE Mac, for myself, as long as they didn't have to directly support it. By the time I left the company three years later, two full departments were using Macs, and the MIS department readily requisitioned them for those who felt they were needed to perform their jobs. I've been there.

Don't make assumptions that just bolster your own ignorance. I understand that "just buy a Mac" isn't a solution in and of itself. But just because a POS is the backbone of a majority doesn't make it less of a POS. It takes vision and a certain amount of cajones to go against what you already feel comfortable with. To recommend to an entrenched IT department something which they may not like, but which could have long-term benefits to your company.

Insulting others and belittling their experience, when you know dick about that experience, shows just how short-sighted you are.

.

[Neshanic]

203. So you do architecturals and engineering drawings on those retailer machines?

Obviously you are a pro, now go try that in a multi-office/state Architectural, Civil Engineering or Landscape Architecture firm.

[Atman]

243. You spelled your screen name wrong

I think you meant "Messiahanic."

:eyes:

What the bloody hell is a "retailer machine?" I promise you, the computer doesn't know or care what you're using it for. If it's properly equipped, it will be just as happy designing and managing 100-page full color catalogs across a multi-person creative team as it will designing a fucking lawn with a bunch of fountains.

.

[nadinbrzezinski]

156. So my problems running dreamweaver have NOTHING to do with

VISTA

Okie dokie...

[Recursion]

104. You may have a lucky hardware combination, then

It has a tendency, among other things, to take its graphics work out of the GPU (which was the whole selling point -- hell, even Beryl on Linux does this right) which slows everything horribly.

Also, the process model for Windows is still fundamentally Broken, Evil, and Wrong, and no matter how many times they re-write it from the ground up they just make it worse.

[Neshanic]

37. Yes that is so going to happen. Architecture and engineering firms throwing

their PC's away en masse. Hundred of thousands of PCs, so they can buy a MAC, which is not chump change.

Vista by far has been a nightmare, but large and small firms that run AutoCad are staying on XP, waiting it out and then they will migrate to Vista.

Lets do the math. Keep the 100 Dells and upgrade to Vista after the service packs or buy 100 new Macs.

[Clark2008]

51. Bingo

Most informed post of the day.

[Atman]

68. So what part of "MACS RUN WINDOWS" don't you people understand?

If you have a machine that will run Autocad when you need it, but won't be a total time-wasting piece of shit requiring a 24/7 IT guy the rest of the time, when does "cost-effective" come into play? Believe me, look into what large corporations pay for hardware. They aren't buying the $399 PC's from WalMart. What they're buying is every bit as expensive as any Mac, and they're paying some IT guy a yearly salary with benefits to keep it running.

Or they could buy a Mac which dual boots, so you can run AutoCad, and not have an entire department dedicated to keep the fucking thing running.

COST? Do the math. Please. Do the math.

.

[Neshanic]

96. The math has already been done. To oufit a single drafting station

with a very cheap and capable PC and have AutoCad on it is a fraction of the purchase of a new Mac. They are not from WalMart. Most firms in my experience exclusively buy Dell and LOTS of them.

Go visit a large engineering, planning, landscape architecture or architecture firm.

Shilling for Macs is one thing, but when you have no clue on how large design firms operate and use PC's then you should research it and then post.

As far as the IT guy, firms run very smoothly on Windows XP and AutoCad, so much so, a large firm owned by a friend of mine has 70 stations with a computer on each desk.

Their IT guy is a part time college student...he only works part time doing IT support for them.

[Atman]

114. Any particular reason why you feel the need to be rude about it?

I have no clue how large design firms operate, huh? Interesting. Where did you come up with this information, since you don't know anything about me or my background?

The price-comparisons of Macs to Dells has been done a hundred times over. Dell computers, when identically equipped, cost pretty much the same as Macs. It's just a fact, Google it. The trouble is, Macs generally have way more features out of the box. A Dell may start out cheaper for the base box, but when you equip one with the same components, the prices come to par. Again, Google it.

Oh, and you switched the argument back to Win XP, which I run on my Mac just fine. But the thread was about Vista.

.

[Neshanic]

164. Read carefully. The Dells are NOT identically equiped in large offices.

There are large pools of Dells that have people in front of them just running AutoCad or Microstation. Others that need more horsepower, say the graphic designers would approach the cost of the Mac.

If you were a business owner would you buy 100 Macs, and then cost compare to the souped up Dells, when the Dells would be required to do only very limited things like drafting?

How hard is this to grasp?

[nadinbrzezinski]

206. A MAC MINI could do that

and it is comparable to basement DELLS.

I did the exercise very recently...

The Macbook is priced right there with mid range laptops, and IT IS a mid range laptop.

Up end machines... the mac was actually cheaper than the one running in the office...

It didn't match it specs wise, but the upper end macs now do, and they are still cheaper.

[nadinbrzezinski]

146. Hmm having done the math

yes... had to in order to buy my laptop to replace my eight year old XP tablet...

The Mac, ran me the same, feature wise... given that it CAN run autocad, on either the windows side (if O chose to do that), or on the MAC side, the but it can run only on windows is out the window.

The argument is no longer there that the mac is more expensive.

It used to be the case... and if you are that desperate to run windows for a windows specific app, I can load either XP or Vista on this machine... and if I did load any WIN, it would be XP... no thank you, the nightmares on Vista are still leaving me crossed.

[Neshanic]

165. I have a Hp laptop that was a grand. It runs

Autocad 2008, Acrobat Professional, Adobe Creative Suite, Office 2007, Vista Ultimate.

It has an AMD 64, 240 ram 2gig memory 17" screen. One grand.

Tell me where you get Macs for a grand with that. I will stand in line.

[Atman]

194. At the Apple store.

:shrug:

IF they sold stripped-down machines. I'd actually pay extra NOT to have Vista on my machine. And I'm sure that software you mentioned wasn't FREE. Don't try to toss it into the mix as if it was part of your $1000 purchase.

.

[Neshanic]

205. No the AutoCad alone is a fortune. But the machine itself was a grand.

I was at the Apple store yesterday, me being the open minded person I am, I wanted to see the new stuff.

No thousand dollar machines. Not by a long shot.

[nadinbrzezinski]

209. Here you go

http://www.smalldog.com/category/x/x/MacBook/MacBook/wag140/wag10040

The one I got in front of me was a demo model, it ran 1200 and it runs great

But when you go to the site, you will see machines for $999.

[Neshanic]

211. Thank you for that, but as you can see,

The HP I have has 240 hard drive not a 60.

2 gigs of memory, not 512.

17" screen not 13"

Four USB ports, not two.

Unless I am reading that wrong, thats the $999.00 machine.

Also is there a slot in that so it accepts a Verizon Aircard?

[nadinbrzezinski]

212. You can go ask

me, happy with the machine I got.

And I got it from them.

Comparable...

But at this point you will look for anything to convince yourself that there are no 900 dollar machines

As is when I did my research it was either the mac, or a 500 dollar machine and LINUX, insert flavor here.

You see, the WINDOWS, mostly used for gaming box, down the hall has some SERIOUS issues wiht small things like oh Dreamweaver and other software that I need to run

[CRF450]

213. Yeah, 60gigs is pretty small these days.

With high speed internet being the norm now, movies/videos, music and all kinds of multi media files would fill up a 60 gig hd in no time.

[nadinbrzezinski]

214. Some of the Intel systems I looked at had 512 RAM

at that price range, and 80 gig drives.

So you take your lumps

He said there was no system... there you go.

There are.

But hey, at this point it is the I hate mac, or I hate vista

I hightly dislike vista for the serious headaches that it has given me....

And that is the truth.

But hate, no, not hate

And yes, there are mac systems for $999... just as there are WIN systems even for less, that also are not ideal

(They were for my purposes, and LINUX)

Now I would not buy a base machine on ANY system if I am going to do some serious work. And I am sorry a 1,000 dollar machine may be sufficient for now, but how often do you buy machines? My last WIN machine is oh eight years old, and had a ridicolously small 20 gig hard drive... and the thing still powers up... and did I mention it is eight years old?

The gaming machine we replaced, was also eight years old. We don't buy machines every year or two...

This MAC will have to last at least six years, if not eight... and so should the GAMING rig

[CRF450]

223. Wow, running newer games on an 8 year old gaming pc would be tough

Which is hard for me to believe that a new high end demanding game even on low graphics would be playable on an 8 year old system. My last pc was almost 4 years old. It had an AMD 64 3400 @ 2.2ghz (a socket 752 also) 1gig of memory and a 6800gt vid card (AGP interface). Crysis wouldn't even be playable at low graphics on that, but it played games like FEAR very well.

[nadinbrzezinski]

233. It did, it limped but it did

we got that one when XP came out... yes I got those nightmares too, and they were NOT as bad as Vista's

I take care of my toys

Hell, it was still good enough for me to do my writing on...

:-)

And we nursed it, until we got the cash to buy a new machine

We don't buy a machine with credit either

Hell, with a new board, my nephew will get it for school... he does not need a fancy, shmanzy new machine for grammar school.

If need be, will load LINUX on it

[NuttyFluffers]

276. people worry about HDD space on laptops nowadays?

dude, where've you been, it's all about external storage nowadays. why on earth would you need more space on your laptop if it's not for lugging around a bunch of porn 'n games? if you're doing real work 60GB should be more than enough for any single real world business project. after that it's pump 'n dump on any LAN's external HDD. huh, or maybe i travel different circles...

anyhoo, yeah the screen and RAM could be an issue, but if the system's run equivalently it's no biggie. i'm still recalling my humorous encounter with my parents about the advantage of screen sizes. they looked aghast at me and said, " hun, why would we want to break our back lugging such a heavy thing all around and be swallowed up by a screen like sitting at the front row of a theater? we have a larger monitor sitting at that table over there that you set up for us. we don't need to have something almost as big and heavy on our laps and next to our eyeballs!" i still laugh over that. it helps me get perspective that not all users see 'bigger is better.' but 17" is definitely a whole lot of screen for the money, isn't it?

the USB ports is such a non-issue; who doesn't have USB splitters? oh noes, one small additional peripheral! and why on earth are you plugging that many peripherals at the same time into a portable device? if you have real work to do that's what the desktop is for, right? and if you're working at an off-site location i'd once again just slap my data across in attachment to the target location or port it over via iPod or similar external HDD and work with it over there with all their gear. otherwise it's extra labor and risk to lug all those peripherals and plug up some monstrous setup in the middle of travel. again, i probably just travel different circles...

anyways, i guess those could be valid concerns. y'know different strokes for different folks, i guess. i'm just very KISS oriented and lazy probably.

i'm still curious about the Verizon Aircard concern. are you just worried about having a card slot? wouldn't it just be better to use the Verizon Wireless USB modem? why are you bothering with rapidly out-dating methods? wifi, bluetooth, CD/DVD, audio line out, and USB will be around for quite a while yet; worrying about any other connector is kinda odd to me. it's like asking for a 6-port universal memory card reader built-in. it's not an important feature, i think.

i remember listening to my parents worries last time with a mac, mac mini to be precise. i looked at them and noted the KB, mouse, monitor, external HDDs all over the place, and other peripherals we accumulated over the years and looked at them in askance. why on earth do we need to bother with useless feel-good muscle car stats when what we need is a stable architecture and spiffy new multimedia software? all of which comes included if we switched? it was really an easy sell after that. but yeah, it's really a customization thing. not all customers need the same things.

[stlsaxman]

261. My Mac Mini was $499.00 and is my home theatre, recording studio AND the center of my business.

i bought it 3 years ago and it has NEVER failed me.

a $500 investment that does everything i need and more as soon as i take it out of the box is an immeasurable value.

[nadinbrzezinski]

207. You can... go to the macstore

the Macbook base machine runs about a grand.

You can even get them for $999 at small dogs electronics

[EOTE]

155. I run IT for an entire FDA building.

I support 250+ some Dells here, and let me tell you, they are not 'every bit as expensive as any Mac', unless Macs are like $400 now (like the GX260s we had were, and I'm guessing our new Lenovos aren't that much more), which I'm guessing they're not. And I somehow doubt that the FDA would no longer have need for my services if they came across a windfall and upgraded to Macs. Also, even if Macs somehow magically allow companies to get rid of their IT departments, my measly salary wouldn't quite offset the crazy cost of replacing the 250 some Dells and Lenovos. Oh, and in case you haven't heard yet, Leopard can run on X86 architecture now. So that dual boot thing works both ways.

[Neshanic]

163. Well there you have it. Thank you for the sanity in the rush to dump all that is MIcrosoft and PC's

[EOTE]

171. Sure thing.

Vista does have some problems, but it's nowhere near the epidemic it's made out to be. My system has run completely stable since Vista has been installed. Yes, it does require some hefty hardware to run at its best, but if your current system won't run it well, stick with XP and install Vista when you have faster hardware. For me, I don't miss XP at all. Everything that ran on XP runs for me on Vista as well, plus my Vista can recognize all 4 gigs of RAM where XP couldn't. If you don't want to upgrade, that's just fine. XP will be supported for quite some time. But no need to criticize those who do, or Microsoft for making a scalable OS.

[Xithras]

191. Actually, few corporations buy ANY computers nowadays. Mac's are cut out of the market.

Most large corporations lease their computers from vendors like Dell permitting them to replace the computers on a 3-5 year cycle. The company pays a fixed fee to the vendor each year in exchange for swapping out 25-30% of the companies desktops yearly. The vendors, in turn, discount the hardware pretty steeply because lease deals are a more reliable revenue stream than per-unit sales, and they can resell them through other channels in foreign markets when the units are returned at the end of the lease. The companies benefit from lower replacement and maintenance costs (leased computers can simply be swapped if they fail) and the tax benefits of making lease payments on a depreciating product (some companies can deduct ALL of their computer lease expenses).

Vista may scare the crap out of the mid-tier businesses that are only dealing with a couple hundred PC's, but those businesses (and their intermittent per-unit purchases) aren't a particularly large part of Microsoft's Vista revenue stream anyway. In the really big companies running thousands of desktops, upgrading isn't even a subject of discussion...the current computers run XP, and the Vista conversion will occur as the older units are lease-swapped for newer ones under contract.

The problem for Apple is that one of Jobs' first moves when he took over again was to completely eliminate the white box market and seriously curtail the power of resellers, which eliminated this sort of thing for Apple users. Apple does have it's AFS credit division which can arrange lease deals for large corporations, but they aren't set up to quickly respond to the needs of large corporations and have no provisions for staggered product replacement. Each replacement is treated as a separate sale, and all of the computers in the sale must be swapped out as a group at the end of the lease (which can be a problem if the computers are located in different physical locations). It is also much more difficult to get IT staff trained by Apple, preventing in-house warranty work and substantially increasing IT costs.

Apple isn't exactly unfriendly to the large corporate market, but they are fairly indifferent to it. That market drives IT development in this country and underwrites most of Microsoft's sales. Until that changes, I wouldn't expect to see many Apples gracing the desktops of many large companies.

[Neshanic]

208. Very good synopsis, but alas, we are cavemen with sticks designing things.

That was a great post.

[Recursion]

105. AutoCAD runs fine on WINE

Every company I sysadmin for has some horrid piece of legacy Windows-only crapware that they need, and they all seem to work fine in emulation with WINE, so far (knocking wood).

[CK_John]

52. Beware. . .Beware. . VM is the future, nobody is safe. n/t

[ReverendDeuce]

62. I agree! VMs are the future of enterprise...

This is my line of work, and if you're not going virtual, you're going to be legacy in a couple of years.

[Deja Q]

80. Virtual servers and probably thin clients if not laptops

Virtual servers are way-cool; quite efficient.

Still plenty of proper desktop applications as well...

[ReverendDeuce]

111. Yup... VDI is the future of enterprise desktops as well...

I've tested a few thin-clients and VDI-specific devices. They work incredibly well!

[Deja Q]

154. How scalable are they?

One still needs a huge network and server infrastructure.

[ReverendDeuce]

160. Not entirely if you think about it...

I've been testing VDI (virtual desktops, for those who aren't familiar) in an enterprise setting for a bit now. End-user usage patterns are not that much different from servers in that most of the day, they are idle.

With VMware ESX, I spec'd that you could run about 80 WindowsXP desktops on one quad dual-core Opteron server with 32gb of RAM if each VM had 512mb of memory configured. With ESX and the memory balloon driver, you'd be able to over-allocate memory. My memory usage numbers are very conservative. You could probably allocate 768mb or 1gb of memory to some systems. If you up the ESX host to 64gb of RAM, 1gb is no sweat.

Factor in the cost of the infrastructure for this...

Costs:

- 2 x 8 CPU HP servers with 32gb of RAM w/ VMware VI3 license bundle: $60,000 (one could do it, but you want redundancy!)
- EMC CX310-C SAN with say 30 x 146GB 15K FC drives w/ support and FC switching hardware: $65,000 (I recently priced this out, so this number is good)
- Windows XP software licenses: ~$10,000

Cost credits:

- You can't really put a number on lower downtime and support costs, but believe me -- VMs are **solid**. 99.999% uptime with Windows is the norm for VMs. Let's say reduced support costs by about $20,000 per year time spent compared to maintaining 80 desktops over a typical 3 year depreciation schedule, so $60K over 36 months.
- Environmental costs... thin-clients typically are within PoE spec, meaning they run 5V @ about 7 watts or so. A typical Dell desktop will have a 300W power supply: 24,000W usage for desktop versus 640W usage for thin-client. Let's say in the summer months you lower your AC costs by about 15%. In the winter, your heating may slightly rise, but typical thermal dissipation is negligible. So, over a year, let's say about a $5,000 power savings aggregate.

So, over a three year period, for running VDI, the total cost over three years will be around $117,000. Or, about $41 per employee per month per virtual desktop.

Now, if we buy individual desktops systems...

Using my typical system spec, combined with power costs and additional support costs, about $197,000 or about $69 per employee per month.

This doesn't even attempt to quantify a value for the performance of the systems. The fact that each desktop is on a bona fide SAN using disks that are twice as fast as a desktop system, plus the VDI appliances themselves (the thin-client hardware) is completely useless if stolen and thus dramatically increases security, and it's on an enterprise architecture, it just makes business sense to do it. The only problem we've run into are sales people -- they just don't like the fact that it's a small little box about the size of a paperback novel on their desk. They claim it makes them feel like a telemarketer, even though the workstation experience is vastly superior in every way. Other departments seem to like them. :)

So that's the two minute pitch on VDI... :)

[alfredo]

201. I'm thinking of running VMware Fusion so I can have Linux running

alongside OSX. I will first double my RAM.

http://www.linux.com/feature/118935

[ReverendDeuce]

252. I know several who do just this...

VMware Fusion runs Windows on OS X better than Windows does natively, apparently.

Of course, it's not game-able and the performance isn't the same as a true high-powered PC, but for 99% of users it's perfect!

[alfredo]

258. It seems like a good solution. It will be spring and tax return time

before I can do it.

[gtar100]

250. That is totally cool. Thanks!

From your cost analysis to the thin-client hardware. Very interesting to think about. Our workgroup is moving toward VDI. Thanks for sharing.

[ReverendDeuce]

251. Who ever thought you'd have this kind discussion on DU? :)

n/t

[musette_sf]

53. Vista sucks, I successfully "downgraded" to XP

not without a bit of pain, but it was all worth it.

i found Vista to be bloated and slow, with a junked-up crappy interface that seemed to combine all the worst "features" of every web portal you hate.

on a brand-new dual processor Pentium machine with 4GB RAM and a 750 GB HD, with no other applications on it, the HD would be grinding away constantly under Vista, even when i wasn't doing or accessing anything. bloatware at its worst.

the IE browser is part of the OS, not a separate application. this is complete and total BS in my mind. i like to pick my applications, not have M$ decide which ones i shall have. i also hear that Vista does not like for you to install Firefox or other alternative browsers, and that such alternative browsers will not function properly on Vista.

as a longtime (21+ years) IT professional, i did a lot of homework on Vista, to see if there was any saving grace, any useful features or functionality, that Vista offered or would offer in the future, that would make it worth trying. i found that even the M$ Vista propaganda website could brag about NOTHING except the "WOW Factor", i.e., the junked-up crappy interface. and i learned that many applications and peripherals are just plain Vista-incompatible.

this was enough for me to make the educated decision that formatting the HD and "downgrading" to XP Pro would be the best thing i could do with my brand new machine. i couldn't care less about the junked-up crappy interface. i want my system to run my applications, the same ones i've been running under Win98 and XP, without a hassle. i want to choose my ancillary applications by best of breed, not by what M$ wants to shove down my throat bundled into the operating system.

i read on one of the websites i researched, that Vista is what happens when you let the gamer d00dz run your OS business. let's just say that being able to run Halo 2 was not a factor in my operating system needs and requirements. neither was the "Aero" interface, which is just a load of window dressing crap.

downgrading to XP is not for the faint-hearted, but i'm so glad i did it. no more constant HD grinding on a maxed-out box just to run the OS. nice clean interface. everything works. it's just..... nice.

[EOTE]

158. Sounds like you might have a defunct hard drive.

I've got Vista installed on a dual core machine as well. Mine is an OCed E2180 (one of the cheapest chips Intel puts out right now), paired with 4 gigs of RAM and a 500 gig RAID 0 setup. I get a 5.7 in the Vista Experience with my processor being the limiting factor and everything else scoring a 5.9. My hard drive is pretty silent, but the only time I see it working is when I have SEVERAL applications open at once including very system intensive games. Otherwise, applications like Photoshop, Office 2007 appllications, Firefox, etc. all open instantly. Yes, Vista is a RAM hog, but with 4 gigs, that hardly matters. I think of Vista as an upgrade from XP not because it's more efficient (it's not), but because it can take better advantage of modern hardware than XP can. Vista right now with 4 gigs of RAM is running better than XP was when I had 2 gigs of RAM. Plus, it's got all those cool features from Aero (I'm sorry, I like eye candy). That, and it runs all of my games with no problem. So, I'm going to stick with it a while.

[musette_sf]

159. HD brand new, not "defunct"

and nice and quiet under XP. not an HD problem.

"opening instantly" was never the problem, my programs opened just fine. HD churning when absolutely no applications were being run was my issue. it p!ssed me off.

i stand by my original statement.

but if you are a gamer, then maybe you have a legitimate need for Vista-specific hardware.

[EOTE]

174. Did this system have a fresh install of Vista?

Or was it included on a Dell or other pre-configured system? I ask because I did a fresh install of Vista x64 and I only see my hard drive seek for a brief second after opening an application. If it is a pre-configured system, the bloatware very well could be from Dell, IBM etc. and not from MS. Since installing, I've only turned on Aero and have left everything else the same.

[musette_sf]

177. it was ordered from Costco

and came pre-installed. but that's a pretty poor excuse as to why Vista acted like the bloatware that it is.

if HP and M$ colluded to send me a pre-configured system where the only way i could get the OS to behave was to go to the trouble of reinstalling it and all my drivers etc, then they both suck, don't they?

it was a better use of my time to just downgrade to XP Pro. it has all the hardware support i want.

like i said in an earlier post in this thread, Vista is what happens when you let gamer d00dz run your OS group.

[EOTE]

179. I don't see how MS should be held responsible for what HP does.

Sounds to me like HP is the guilty party here. Microsoft has no way of controlling the bloatware that HP adds to their machine. Collusion is not a factor here. In fact, Dell created their Vostro line of products to address this very issue. It's a shame that a whole division needed to be created so that people could order computers without tons of unessential crap added to it, but I hardly see how that would be Microsoft's fault.

[musette_sf]

182. really?!?!?!

then maybe you can explain why my HP warranty became voided when I installed XP Pro.

yep, that's right. installing another operating system instead of the Vista that was pre-installed, voids your hardware warranty.

sounds like collusion to me.

[CRF450]

183. Thats their policy, not Microsoft's

The best than can be done to systems preloaded with Vista without voiding the warranty is just uninstall the usless programs and bloat you know your not going to use. Thats what we did on my dad's HP and it runs so much better now.

[musette_sf]

187. but uninstalling Vista

worked ever so much better.....

on edit: i still hold that tying the HARDWARE warranty to a third-party OS is collusion. my HARDWARE warranty should be for the HARDWARE, regardless of which OS i choose to install.

think of it this way: what if an automaker told you that the warranty was voided if you used any other gasoline but, say, Chevron?

[CRF450]

188. Yes yes we know that

[musette_sf]

190. and yes yes we know that

you are a M$ apologist.

and?

[CRF450]

192. Why call me a MS apologist when my experience with Vista has been good?

Being kinda ignorant, dont you think?

I know M$ has problems, we all know that. Since Vista isn't giving me any trouble, I wont be using any other OS's since it does what I want it to.

[musette_sf]

195. oops

i should have called you "gamer d00d whose gaming experience relies on the OS", said OS being Vista.

that being said, i assert once again that M$ leaving their OS business to the gamer d00dz was a really bad business move.

i prefer for my browser, security products, etc etc etc, to be chosen by me, not embedded in the OS. which is just one of the many reasons i dumped Vista.

and this "changing the OS voids your HARDWARE warranty" bit really chaps my @ss.

[CRF450]

215. Am I suppose to hate Vista?

I dont do a whole lot of gaming, but I do want the best hardware for the eye candy and smooth frame rates. Apple doesn't have the gaming market, because games use DirectX and thats MS only. Apple doesn't use that architecture, instead they use OpenGL. Some games do make use of it, but the vast majority dont, and we wont be seing that anytime soon. I dont think OpenGL is even capable of giving us DX9 or 10 level graphics anyways, plus DX is way way easier for game developers to work with.

[EOTE]

197. Ummm, how does HP's warranty have anything to do with MS?

And with regards to your theoretical, I'd say it was within that automaker's right to stipulate whatever they want in their warranty. And Chevron might not have anything to do with it, it might simply be that automaker's preferred oil. Once again, it's HP's warranty, not Microsoft's. Try a fresh install of Vista and then see how it runs. Don't judge its performance by how HP configures it. With the system specs you have, Vista should fly.

[CRF450]

198. Have you read my reply about the vid card?

[musette_sf]

200. you tell me

how HP's warranty has anything to do with M$. i haven't a clue. but if Vista came pre-installed, and one chooses to delete it and install another operating system, one's hardware warranty is voided. check it out with HP if you don't believe me. i'm really disappointed with HP shoving something i don't want down my throat, and threatening me with voiding the warranty if i don't submit. the crazy (even crazier than the warranty bit) part is that if i had purchased Vista Premium with the system instead of Vista Home, OR if i had found a way to purchase a "Compaq" HP, i.e. "business" system vs. "consumer" system with identical configuration, HP would have been legally bound to support my downgrade and maintain my warranty. pure BS.

your rebuttal to my automobile theoretical doesn't hold water. manufacturer's warranty specifies type of oil, not brand. and any auto manufacturer that tied its warranty to a specific brand and make of oil or gas (gas was the example in my theoretical) would be out of business quickly.

i left Vista on my system for a week while i did the research on downgrading, drivers, etc. both spouse and i decided we just couldn't take the junked-up interface and all the nagware "features". even on the M$ Vista propaganda site, they could not list a single "benefit" that would make it worth it to me, now or someday in the future, to stay with Vista on this machine.

as i've stated before in this thread, i do not like browser, security, etc etc etc, built into the OS. i like to choose the applications and utilities that i want on the system. XP Pro lets me do that with far less hassle than Vista.

i was a Compaq, IBM, and Apple reseller for years. i've used Windows since version 1.0. when i say i don't like, want, or need Vista, i believe i know wherefrom i speak.

[JPettus]

228. Dell offers an alternative

You can buy with Vista pre-installed or Ubuntu.

[EOTE]

281. Never said you didn't have a right to dislike Vista.

What I said was that the bloatware you were referring to most likely came from HP, not MS. I also referred to your annoyances with regards to HP and MS and their 'collusion' which is simply HP's policy and has nothing to do with Microsoft. If you don't like Vista, that's fine, but don't go blaming Microsoft for HP's annoying software and don't blame them for colluding with HP for HP's business practices.

[JPettus]

230. I suspect it's more about support

If they have done all their testing on one platform and not on the other, and you switch to the other, their options are to spend the money testing the new platform or void the warranty. Guess which way big business tends to go?

[ReverendDeuce]

59. I actually like Vista...

I've been running it here at home for a few months now.

Performance is, in many ways, better than XP on high-end systems like mine.

With older PCs or systems with less spec, then I'd urge you to shut-off the SuperFetch service (less spec basically means less than 2GB of RAM).

[mainegreen]

60. Hey alfredo, you're kicking ass at folding.

#1 current producer on the team!

http://folding.extremeoverclocking.com/team_summary.php?s=&t=48157

:thumbsup:

[alfredo]

67. Damn! That using a Mac Mini. I thought we had some big iron on

our team.

[nadinbrzezinski]

70. happily typing from my new mac

and it was vista that sent me this way

[alfredo]

78. Which one you get?

Good Mac sites:


very good forums

http://www.macnn.com/

Software? Git it here:

http://www.macupdate.com/


We have a Mac forum. Drop by and say hello.

[nadinbrzezinski]

100. macbook

and yes have dropped by the forum

Today I got drive genius

I do my drive maintainance... worth every penny every time

[alfredo]

117. Great. I am on SS so I could only afford a Mini. I'm happy with it.

It's really churning out the work units for folding@home.

[NuttyFluffers]

277. mac mini is a nifty lil' budget machine, isn't it?

my folks like the setup i made for them. they still find the system footprint the most endearing thing, too. i do try to make them explore the software, i really do... they've lately loved me for making a website memorial for one of our dearly departed. trying to teach 'em to move on up to chat software -- wish me luck!

[mudesi]

79. I'll believe it when I see it

Does anybody honestly believe that 5 years from now 90% of the world's computers won't be running Vista?

They have a monopoly. It's not going anywhere.

[JPettus]

227. If you're talking the world

Don't count on it. Linux is already making major inroads in Europe and Asia. People don't have to fight with Microsoft about licensing and it's free so anyone can download it and run it. Also, they can easily modify it for their own language, situation and create their own distro. For the average user, a desktop like Ubuntu's is just as easy to use as Windows.

Microsoft is fighting like hell to keep government offices from going with open standards and they are slowly losing small amounts of market share here and there.

Vista was really a mistake for Microsoft. It took too long to come out and when it did come out, it had too many problems, and too many reasons NOT to upgrade to it, including cost. I don't know any IT departments that are looking forward to making the upgrade and most will hold out as long as they can to give Microsoft a chance to correct the problems they see in it. Of course, that still won't mitigate the cost of upgrading to Vista, but many companies would rather pay for new software than pay for training their people to use a better alternative. After all, people with new marketable skills may go away to make more money but new software pretty much stays in the office and works. ;-)

[mudesi]

256. That's what they always say about Linux

Only computer professionals and enthusiasts bother to use Linux. The average Joe doesn't have the time nor the patience to install a new operating system when his/her computer already comes shipped with one installed.

[nadinbrzezinski]

273. Problem is that schools in places like RUSSIA

are installing Linux

and governments, some even in the US, have already migrated...

The hold is not as solid

Oh and I know people who have been giving distribution disks of UBUNTU in Tijuana to anybody who will have them,.

The hold OUTSIDE the US and even in some US States is not as solid as it used to be.

[Tatiana]

81. My IT department did not upgrade to Vista and has no plans to do so.

I'm hoping we can ride this one out. Remember the upgrade from Win 98 - Millennium Edition (ME)? Remember how much it sucked? I ended up downgrading from the pre-installed ME back to Win 98 and held on until XP came out.

The IT department where I work has been beta testing a few Vista PCs and what they've found is that there are issues with the software and programs we currently use in the workplace. I really like the desktop, though.

I'm perfectly fine waiting until '09, when a hopefully, more stable and less buggy OS is released. XP Pro works just fine for me, so I'm sticking with it for now both at work and home.

[Initech]

85. Ditto.

We didn't upgrade to Vista because our software would require purchasing all new licenses at $5,000 a piece. Add that to the $400 / license of Vista, and, eh, let's just say no fucking way.

[JPettus]

225. I will say this for Vista

It's *pretty*

Still, I will stick with functionality and hang onto my Linux OS.

[johnfunk]

87. Vista: So damn BAD it makes IT pros nostalgic for...

The Blue Screen of Death™

Ah, the memories...

[datasuspect]

90. a lot of the process lagginess goes away with the SP1 beta

it's available, just have to sign up for it.

plus it doesn't take as long to come back from suspend.

i noticed a marked improvement in performance after installing SP1 beta.

playing DVDs? - download and install VLC.

[alfredo]

92. That's good, but it will be hard to overcome first impressions.

[nadinbrzezinski]

101. How about running dreamweaver in my PRIMARY

account?

Trust me, that was ANNNOYING

[dpbrown]

94. MS has always been crap forced on people through monopoly power - good if karma is catching up

Mac OS X is certified Linux now, from what I hear.

[alfredo]

95. Actually certified UNIX. I don't know if that means anything in

the real world. Just as long as it works, fine.

All the time during the first five years of OSX, there were rumors of an Intel version. It wasn't confirmed until the first Intel machine was unveiled. We then found that they always had an Intel version that tracked the PPC version.

[dpbrown]

113. I believe that NEXTSTEP was multi-platform as well

According to Wikipedia, NEXTSTEP ran on Motorola 68000 family processors, IBM PC compatible x86, Sun SPARC, and HP PA-RISC. and was based on UNIX.

Mac OS X is a descendant of NEXTSTEP so it's not surprising that the development ran concurrently.

[alfredo]

115. Look at this demo of NextStep. to see the roots of OSX

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j02b8Fuz73A

[dpbrown]

119. Except for the colors, it's a lot like Mac OS X

How long until Jobs takes over Disney?

[musette_sf]

129. NextStep completely rocked

i worked for Businessland at the time and they had the exclusive on NeXT PCs.

an idea whose time had not yet come, at least from the consumer/business perspective.

[alfredo]

134. I've used the window manager back in my Linux days.

[Renew Deal]

124. I once heard someone say that OSX is the best "Linux" interface.

It's really the best Unix interface, but we're splitting hairs.

[Triana]

102. I have yet to even LOOK at friggin Vista....

..got me mac, got me linux - don't need no stinkin Vista.

[Recursion]

103. I've made a cottage industry out of putting Linux on friends' computers

Linux is much better for a naive user. There are much fewer ways to break it.

The common claim "but I don't know how to use Linux" is generally best met with the true, if harsh, retort "yes, but you also don't know how to use Windows".

[nadinbrzezinski]

107. I'm laughing here

I got the mac, but I also considered hard, just getting a basement machine, formating and installing linux

Ubuntu is the flavor I like

I am happy wiht the mac and the creative writing tool I got for it made it worth it all the way

then again, for layout I still have access to a WIN power horse

;-)

Though I am the IT here, so when it misbeheaves, guess who gets called?

[alfredo]

136. If you have a chance, check out Scribus.

http://www.scribus.net/

[nadinbrzezinski]

150. Have used it

and Word 07 does pretty layout faster and far easier than putting together a 180 page book on scribus.. hell the first magazine I put togehter was laid out on Scribus...

Now word 07 has a weird problem, when putting together the index... it was freezing every five pages... that was ANNOYING. But the book is out, doing happy dance here.

I may try I'works for the magazine, since it does NOT need an index... and the duddleheads forgot to add such a tool to the word processor... that will not compete in the enterprise for that reason.

[alfredo]

162. With Word, maybe you could save, and relaunch at 5 or 6 pages.

That will give your mind and eyes a break.

You mean iWork?

[nadinbrzezinski]

210. I mean word has a nice bug in it

as to I-Works '08... it is pretty, it is nice, but it lacks some serious index capabity

It is good enough to do general layout on the Mac, and export to work and then seat in front of the fancy windows machine and
do the final layout.

I have no idea what they were thinking with I-Works... if they wanted it to be a iight DTP engine... where is the freaking index?

;-)

[alfredo]

221. Go to the Apple forums and make a request. Make your case to them.

They could be doing what they did with iMovie. They started off with the basic iMovie, then they came out with Final Cut.

Maybe they will someday release a Quark killer.

Have you tried Keynote?

Check out spaces if you haven't already. It gives you four virtual desktops. On a laptop that could be an essential tool.


http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/spaces.html


Time Machine is too cool. I turn on my external for a few minutes a day and it automatically updates. If you are working on a critical project, keep the backup drive on and have Time Machine update every few minutes.

[nadinbrzezinski]

235. I shant be putting Leopard until January

well after all critical bugs have been stamped.

Then I will consider doing that


For the moment projects live in three drives... the Mac hard drive, the thumb drive and the windows machine drive.

[alfredo]

245. Usually, OSX is pretty good at the .0 version and they are pretty

quick about releasing that first fix. I've been using OSX since 10.0 and I've had few complaints. You know that there was an Intel version since 10.0. They were just waiting for the right time to make the move.

[Warren Stupidity]

118. Odd that as...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Shares of Microsoft Corp. jumped Friday to their highest level in more than six years after the software giant handily beat Wall Street's expectations for first-fiscal-quarter earnings.

The stock topped the $36 mark in early morning trading -- a level not seen since the summer of 2001. The shares later cooled slightly, closing at $35.03, up 9.5% up from the previous close.
The gains were the biggest Microsoft shares had seen in a single day since May 2002, according to data from Thomson Financial. The shares have gained more than 9% in a session just six other times in the past decade.


...

Microsoft's client unit -- which includes the Vista operating system, released to the consumer market in January -- posted $4.1 billion in revenue for the quarter. That's a 24% increase from the same period a year earlier.

Parakh said the appetite for Vista is encouraging. He had been expecting $3.9 billion in sales for the client unit.

Demand for Vista was especially encouraging in "emerging markets" such as Russia and China, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said during a conference call with analysts. In addition, demand for premium, and more expensive versions of Vista was better than expected, he said.

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-shares-hit-6-year-high/story.aspx?guid=%7BAF8A2500%2D9F5B%2D4EAD%2D8A95%2DAFCDF0BC52D1%7D&dist=FSQ

[Renew Deal]

121. Mac and Linux aren't the only solution. XP is a solution as well.

I'm an "IT pro." I've considered what others are considering. I think the best solution for my environment is Windows XP. XP will be supported by Microsoft until 2014. That gives us at least 4 more good years on XP. The OS landscape should change dramatically by 2012. I will try to keep XP alive until then because it's stable and works well for us. Also, there is no compelling reason to change to Vista, Mac, or Linux. It would cost us thousands of man hours for very little benefit. I think a lot will be clarified in teh next 4 years in the areas of OS's, web technology, and SaaS (software as a service).

[musette_sf]

131. 2014? kewl!!!

so i am in good shape and i did the right thing in downgrading.

yes, it was painful -- not only are HW manufacturers (in my case HP) pre-installing Vista, but they are sticking firmware on installed peripherals that is "Vista specific". i ordered my system with a (supposed) Creative SoundBlaster Xtreme Audio board - wouldn't work under XP for anything. finally ripped it out and put in a real Xtreme Audio purchased at Fry's which worked a charm. turns out the POS pre-installed by HP is some munged-up version of the Creative Audigy laptop sound interface, with Vista firmware on it.

if i can't sell the POS on the company BBS to someone who wants a Vista-specific HP-specific sound board (good luck on that), there will be a ceremonial Death By Mallet to the POS out on the patio. photos will be taken.

[Renew Deal]

144. lol

That's awesome.

[alfredo]

260. SaaS is going back to the days of main frames and Basic. The good

ole days.

[Beelzebud]

137. Getting news about Vista from a mac site is like going to Newsmax for Democratic news.

[Deja Q]

152. It would be a mac site, wouldn't it?

Sadly, many IT folks are staying with Windows. The cost of app migration is high, so is the cost of support and re-training. Plus, some of them are sold on the promises. Others know competing apps may not be a standard, may not be good enough, or may not run within Windows emulation.

Most techs worth a damn have been singing the "Windows sucks" mantra for decades. I used to be one of them, but eventually decided to use the tool than to tinker with it all the doo-dah-day and pretend I had a real job.

Reality bytes.

[IDemo]

157. I had the credit card all ready for a new Mac when Leopard released

That was before I took a look at the Apple support discussion board and saw the wide number of issues early adopters were having with 'Leopard' (OSX 10.5, the latest OS release). Blue screens, black screens, the spinning beach ball of death? It struck me as kind of funny last night that the new Mac commercial focuses on the trouble that early users of Vista have had. This, on top of hardware issues with the latest iMacs, makes me feel I'll be better off sticking with my dual boot XP/Linux machine for at least the next six months, or until they can work out a few of the kinks.

I need to improve my Linux capabilities in the meantime anyway, and Vista won't be on any machine of mine for a very long time, if ever.

[FreeState]

167. You went to a help discussion board and saw people talk about problems?

Wow what did you expect?

[IDemo]

173. I'm sure there's a point to be had there somewhere...

I also do not purchase lawnmowers or autos without doing a search on Epinions or Google to see what kind of problems or complaints others have had. If you rely strictly on brand loyalty to decide all your purchases, enjoy!

Apple acknowledges some Leopard installation problems

Apple acknowledges iMac freeze problem

[alfredo]

172. They did an upgrade a few days ago and it appears to have fixed

many of the problems from the .0 release. I had little trouble except for some old PPC apps that didn't want to play in the Leopard's lair. I have an older machine for PS7, so I still can use it.

[Cronus Protagonist]

166. I installed Vista Ultimate two days ago

Very nice. Much nicer than Windows 2000 + 300 service packs and hotfixes, and despite one single driver problem and one software package from 2005 that doesn't work, I'm liking it quite a bit.

[MindPilot]

169. I have just one thing to say to Vista...

QUIT TRYING TO FUCKING HELP ME!!! Jesus, if I have to click through one more are-you-really-really-really-truly-absolutely-positively-certain-you-want-to-do-that? dialog I'm gonna snap.

It may run ok as a stand-alone game box, but you hang even a top-end Vista machine on a big enterprise network, you can go get coffee between mouse clicks. MS has raised the concept of counter-intuitive to new levels; nothing is where you expect to find it. I totally agree with the poster up-thread who said the interface was a compilation of every crappy web page you've ever visited.

I really wish that when you boot up an OS, especially a Windows OS, there was a "Yes, I know what I'm doing" / No, I'm a dumbass" interface option.

I'm an IT guy for a very large multinational corporation. We will possibly be migrating to Vista in a year or so, but only because the hardware will kind of force us into it.

[alfredo]

175. Click through dialogs wastes time, and if you have two hundred

employees having to click through dialogs every day, it adds up. Is there a way to turn off that "feature."?

[EOTE]

176. Yes there is...

Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> System Configuration -> Tools
Then, click on disable UAC, then launch. Reboot your computer and voila! No more annoying UAC dialogs.

[alfredo]

180. That's good. As long as they don't bring back Mr Clippy.

[musette_sf]

178. agreed!

"Yes, I know what I'm doing" / No, I'm a dumbass" interface option is exactly what is needed.

nagware functionality OFF should be default option.

Vista nagware is like Clippy on steroids. NO I DON'T WANT ANY FVCKING HELP DAMMIT! STFU and just let me WORK....

[MindPilot]

185. More like Clippy on a bad run of meth...

Right! Nag screens OFF should be the default. Let me be the one to decide which of my users need to be punished.

It is as irritating to have to go turn the thing off as it is to click though the dialogs.

[nadinbrzezinski]

237. My hubby hates them, but they shall not be turned off

don't ask

[Warren Stupidity]

184. "Yes, I know what I'm doing" / No, I'm a dumbass" option -

its there. Just google Disable UAC. You may still have to remember to 'run as administrator' when starting up some management type apps and shells.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/disable-user-account-control-uac-the-easy-way-on-windows-vista/

I agree that they have gone too far in restricting user activity. On the other hand, if you've had to disinfect root kits malware spyware etc. from a system because somebody clicked on a bright shiny object, then you should understand what the intention was here.

[Gloria]

226. I was afraid of Vista, but it's turning out OK....there are some really

cool features on it...I love the extra clocks, etc.

I'm reading from my Vista News list that SP1 will run 1-2% faster.

[autorank]

229. I just lived the nightmare.

Lenovo, which bought IBM Thinkpad, had a great driver update service. Here's my experience tonight.
Letter I sent to Lenovo customer service (which is great):

I love my x60 Thinkpad but this site is just awful. Previously, I came here and had a one step process to update drivers. Literally, just one or two steps. Extremely efficient. Now I come back and find "automated updates." Well, it's not automated and I got no updates. It failed to download the necessary software twice. Then the automated update program was invoked. Guess what, it said it couldn't run because there was no internet connection. I was on the internet at the time in another browser. That's just ridiculous. This should be easy, like it was, now it's simply impossible, slow, and extremely frustrating.. When I tried to write a response, the dialog box didn't wrap text. I thought, better hit CR. I did. It sent my message incomplete. They my browser froze and I was unable to break out of that even with "task manager." I had to power down after waiting a good while for the freeze to resolve itself. This all took place over a two hour period!

What a lousy experience. I'm going to make every effort to dump Windows, which totally sucks. I resent not being able to use FireFox, a real browser. And I'm very disappointed that what was a great driver service is now unworkable.

I waited until 2002 to switch from Mac to Windows because I saw no reason to use an operating system that crashed frequently. XP is quite good, imho. Then they do this stupid Vista system. I was a beta test user for Office 2007. I had to uninstall it after three days because it was so unstable. It was 2 months before release.

Then this. My thought at then end of messing with this for two hours was, I'm going to Linux, probably Red Hat. And that pisses me off too. I won't have Word 2002 which is heaven on earth (meaning a lot like Word on the Mac circa 1988).

What are these folks in the Seattle burbs doing. They think that they can cram this garbage down our throats, announce they're no longer supporting Office 2002, and that we'll just take it.

:argh:

[nadinbrzezinski]

234. That is one reason why I moved to Mac

considered Linux, but the nightmares have been legendary on the gaming box, which these days, is used for ... gaming

Now I will give the boys in seatle kudos for Word '07

[autorank]

249. Word 07 is that much better?

You must have a later version. In any event, response #2 to my whining indicates that Word can run on Lunux. That would be all I need.

Happy Thanksgiving to you!

[nadinbrzezinski]

269. Happy thanksgiving to you too

I have used Open Source until word '07 came out

I found a major bug, which most folks will never encounter, when putting together the last book... index it froze every five pages

But... and I push my Word Processor to the limit since I use them for light DTP, it did a very good job of laying out my books.

So yes, we had it installed when we got the new machine

These days I do most of the writing on the mac, and then take the document to Word '07 and finish doing the layout.

I have found it is fast, it is easy and pretty painless... except for that aformentioned bug

Now admitedly, we maxed the RAM on the Machine and have an extra four gigs on ready boost, so it should not have any problem with stabitly... and given the bug I found.... I can believe that it has other interesting stabilty issues

Though I have been saving early and often for years, since word 2000 wasn't that stable either.

As I said, if they didn't make it that much better and easier from Open Office... I'd still be using open office, wait, I am... on the Mac

[alfredo]

280. I've been using Open Office and I am happy with it.

Actually I am using the NeoOffice on my Mac because Open Office uses X11 and Neo Office doesn't. It's pretty much the same, but without the X11 dependency.

When you go to Linux, check out the K Office suite to see if it is up to your standards.

good luck. I might be getting a used laptop from my niece. It will be my Linux box.

[upi402]

257. I wonder where that certain someone is

that stalks you everytime you tell about Vista weaknesses???
:toast:

[nadinbrzezinski]

270. Down on my ignore list

By the way I did report the aformentioned WORD bug to MS

Their first response... your machine ain't up to specs

I resent the specs.

I guess we have a bug

I guess you do... care to track it down and stamp it out?

Of course I have gotten that reaction from fellow DU'ers too... and the ever popular, well you don't know computers...

Yeah Right!

Hell, my hubby is playtesting an online MMO... one day HE was having lag... the tech said, well... what are your stats?

He sent them

Are you adopting?

These days they know that if Tom i shaving lag problems, or other obvious developmnet problems... there is an issue somewhere.

:-)

Oh and to the "stalker" have a good and happy turkey day

[IDemo]

236. You may be able to run Word on Linux using Wine or CrossOver

CrossOver: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1886920,00.asp

Wine: http://wine-review.blogspot.com/2007/09/running-ms-office-2003-under-linux-with.html

Wine Doors (Wine configuration utility): http://www.wine-doors.org/wordpress/?page_id=2

[autorank]

248. You are entirely too kind. This would make the choice easy.

I'll give them a shot. Xmas early;)

[nadinbrzezinski]

272. You should be able to run

Word .02, but not word seven... at least not yet

Waiting for them to be able to do that... then I will load that version on the mac too

[Nomad559]

238. The Cult Of Apple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9gdx_LIAc

:)

[Melynn]

240. That's a funny video

I call it the iCult. And yes, I am a Mac user.

[Nomad559]

247. Thanks

I'm glad you like the video, I made It for ALL the Apple cult members here on DU.

I have never had an Issue with the typical Mac user, It's these crazy Apple cult members that annoy me.

:)

[Richard Steele]

242. Hey buddy- where ya been these last two weeks? Installing Vista bug-patches?

Or did that minor quake bust a pipe and flood yer mom's basement?

You shouldn't just disappear like that- Some of us were starting to get worried!


That's a weird little anti-Mac video you found there- what a
confused & pointless waste of FlashVid that was! WOW!!!!!
You know I how I LOVE seeing the weird & stupid DREGS of "human artistic effort",
so thanks for sharing that! I owe ya one. :thumbsup:


I know you've been working on a movie yourself for SIX MONTHS now-
I don't expect I'll agree with anything in it, (of course),
but I have NO DOUBT it will blow the doors off THAT lameassed
pile of 2nd-grade pan-n-scan crap!:rofl:

[Nomad559]

246. Thanks for the post

http://thecultofapple.blogspot.com

I can always use more material for the video

LOL ... You make this to easy for me.

:)

[stlsaxman]

254. so fanboy is a Freeper?!?!

didn't know that. he uses a Mac, huh? well, fuck- i better throw mine out for a PC or folk might get the wrong idea about me from folk like you.

a Freeper... really?

[Nomad559]

259. Some fanboys do behave just like the freepers

The tactics used by some fanboys here on DU are from the same play book that freepers use, and I have about three years of posts from these people to prove It.

A typical Mac user Is NOT a fanboy, just as your typical Windows or Linux user Is not a fanboy, there Is a BIG difference between a user and a fanboy.

Your average software user knows that ALL software has Issues, not so with a fanboy, a fanboy will never admit that his preferred posion has Issues.

Try this, go over to free rePUGlic and post something negative but truthful about George Bush ... now post something negative but truthful about Apple here on DU.

You will get the same type of replies, you will have people calling you names, and trying to Insult you, and sometimes they will try to have you banned, but you will NOT have them questioning the facts of your post.

:)

[stlsaxman]

262. sorry i thought you were referring to the DUer fanboy n/t

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

278. Just like the "fanboys" he rails against, all that obsession against one company just isn't healthy.

Unless he is getting paid for it, of course. Then it'd be just a job. An immoral job, but a job nonetheless.

Whether it's one or the other, I have no idea.

And Nomad, I've seen the Linux screenshot. It proves nothing. Spare people's bandwidth.

[Nomad559]

279. I have no obsession

against any one company, but you sure seem to have an obsession with me.

Every time I post In some Apple thread, you are sure to show up and start with your Incoherent babbling. And as for my Linux screen capture, Its more proof than the avatar you use.

Are you still trying to rewrite the dictionary?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2165426#2166350

:)

[nadinbrzezinski]

289. Agreed

that is less than healthy behavior

[Name removed]

291. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Selatius]

241. I'm still using Windows 2000. It's Service Pack 4, of course.

It's been good for my purposes, and whatever fuck-ups I've had on it usually is on account of my part for fooling around with the system.

[upi402]

255. Vista is sketchy. Always drops offline

and I have to uncheck the 'work offline' box in 'tools'.
etc
etc
etc

and the updates screw everything up everytime!!!:argh:

[Rex]

263. Vista ulitmate 64bit here

Not impressed, nothing better than a suped up version of XP 64bit. More 'options' BFD. Greed is going to eventually kill off MS.

[porphyrian]

266. You mean Microsoft sent an unfinished product to full retail for free public beta testing?!

IT people could never have predicted this happening. They've only done it with every OS they've released.

[LSK]

285. XP will stick around

Vista truly sucks.