Hard times for Vista?

Thread Starter

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
Just heard on the news that MS finally agreed that it's practises have been monopolistic, and that it will be much more accomodating to third party software in the EU. Plus pay more fines.

Vista has the appearance of a monopolist's dream, as it has serious problems allowing non-MS software to run. Be kind of interesting if MS doesn't discover that the os doesn't leave them open to similar suits here in the US.

Wonder how this will play out?
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Microsoft Vs the EU has form dating back to battles over bundling media players and the what not in the XP days - hence the superfluous Windows XP N Edition, a tradition of which continues into the Vista era.

The interesting point is, does the new transparency mean that the "hidden-APIs" that some refer to be opened up to 3rd party vendors? I don't know whether these "hidden-APIs" exist, but is it claimed that this has given MS the advantage in integrating there softwares into the OS. If these APIs exist and MS don't open them up, surely that breaches the anti-monopolistic measures put in place by the EU.

I'm sure that in the grand scheme of things, very little will change.

Dave
 

subtech

Joined Nov 21, 2006
123
If I were MS, I'd not worry about getting vista to co-operate with software from others. I'd be concerned with getting Vista to run, period. My experience with two Vista machines so far has been dismal. I hope a little more time and some more work on the part of MS will help make Vista more solid.
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
If I were MS, I'd not worry about getting vista to co-operate with software from others. I'd be concerned with getting Vista to run, period. My experience with two Vista machines so far has been dismal. I hope a little more time and some more work on the part of MS will help make Vista more solid.
Although I'm not disputing your claim as I know many others have had the same problems, I have found Vista to be pretty solid. It is certainly more stable and usable than both XP and OSX upon release.

When you say dismal, what are you referring to? Slowness, driver support, 15 hours to copy 1 byte of information are some of the common complaints I've heard.

Dave
 

Dragon

Joined Sep 25, 2007
42
Dave,

Stablity in what sense? With Vista, I cannot run ZoneAlarm, Symantec corporate and even simulation softwares like MATLAB without seeing warning messeges of incompatibilty. I had to uninstall the firewall and disable the antivirus simply because I had a headache with frequent rubbish that Vista comes up with. The firewall of windows has known to be notoriously weak within the geek circles.

Other than flashy graphics I do not see any changes in Vista; even they come at a price of upgrading your processor and RAM. After spending so much money, I have to give up on other softwares as well, or purchase new 'compatible' ones.

Does is all sound 'user friendly?

I seriously hope the world turns to open source and dumps MS for good!:p
(But jokes apart, MS has given us quite a lot of flexibility/comfort in the past. But the new Vista sure gave me a headache)
 

recca02

Joined Apr 2, 2007
1,212
when vista was first released i expected it to carry lots of bugs and hence i havent tried it yet.
then someone confirmed my doubts when he said vista is XP with bugs.
the only reason i find the MS is still having a firm hold on market is because many softwares (and games) do not run on other OS.
 

bloguetronica

Joined Apr 27, 2007
1,541
Just heard on the news that MS finally agreed that it's practises have been monopolistic, and that it will be much more accomodating to third party software in the EU. Plus pay more fines.

Vista has the appearance of a monopolist's dream, as it has serious problems allowing non-MS software to run. Be kind of interesting if MS doesn't discover that the os doesn't leave them open to similar suits here in the US.

Wonder how this will play out?
Possibly in favour of Microsoft. And the worst part is that because of Microsoft, most hardware will be Defective by Design (DRM). This will lead Linux out of the competition, because hardware manufacturers will only supply details to Microsoft, and so, making impossible for others to build apropriate drivers.

Although I'm not disputing your claim as I know many others have had the same problems, I have found Vista to be pretty solid. It is certainly more stable and usable than both XP and OSX upon release.

When you say dismal, what are you referring to? Slowness, driver support, 15 hours to copy 1 byte of information are some of the common complaints I've heard.

Dave
No, with Vista the only think is not at risk is "Premium Content", and such does not include sensitive information as passwords, credit card information, etc. I suggest you to read this excellent article by Peter Gutmann:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

It is distributed under Creative Commons license.

If I were MS, I'd not worry about getting vista to co-operate with software from others. I'd be concerned with getting Vista to run, period. My experience with two Vista machines so far has been dismal. I hope a little more time and some more work on the part of MS will help make Vista more solid.
As solid as balsa wood...
 

Thread Starter

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
Just an update with a work-around. As people are discovering, the "native" format for Word 2007 is .docx, and is not compatible with earlier versions of Word.

It is interesting to see the negative commentary on the web from various puplishing houses that refuse to accept documents in a non-compatible format. In the school I volunteer my time with, a student came in with a paper that could not be printed, due to the .docx format problem. But we got her fixed up by a patch that makes Word 2007 save to the .doc format.

If you might be having this problem, go to www.intelliadmin.com and get their patch. It makes Word 2007 save to the old .doc format every time.
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Just an update with a work-around. As people are discovering, the "native" format for Word 2007 is .docx, and is not compatible with earlier versions of Word.

It is interesting to see the negative commentary on the web from various puplishing houses that refuse to accept documents in a non-compatible format. In the school I volunteer my time with, a student came in with a paper that could not be printed, due to the .docx format problem. But we got her fixed up by a patch that makes Word 2007 save to the .doc format.

If you might be having this problem, go to www.intelliadmin.com and get their patch. It makes Word 2007 save to the old .doc format every time.
I can't help but feel that the DOCX format (and other XML formats MS have introduced with Office 2007) will fail because it is only (for the moment) Word 2007 compatible - this leaves a huge gap in the market where this format is superfluous. For businesses all that matters is the bottom line and messing around with format compatibilities is time consuming and therefore costly.

We regularly publish work with a local university here in the UK and they have flatly refused to accept the new Office 2007 formats in any way, or the installation of Windows Vista on the university clusters. We have a few Vista machines at work (mostly engineers laptops), but we are encouraged to use XP when working on the university network. I am really surprised by how serious they take it.

Dave
 

Thread Starter

beenthere

Joined Apr 20, 2004
15,819
The compatability issue is simply enormous. It requires every entity that uses Word to throw away all the old hardware and replace it. The Vista requirements are such that very few computers running XP can goup to Vista without at least a memory upgrade.

Businesses have already been snookered into several upgrade cycles going from Windows 3.2 to 95/98, and then to 2000/XP (lets hope they passes on ME). Another for the sake of Microsoft's profit and market dominance is a bit much.

I feel sorry for people who have already got Vista running, as I hope it dies a quick death. A bas Microsoft!
 

Dave

Joined Nov 17, 2003
6,969
Dave,

Stablity in what sense? With Vista, I cannot run ZoneAlarm, Symantec corporate and even simulation softwares like MATLAB without seeing warning messeges of incompatibilty. I had to uninstall the firewall and disable the antivirus simply because I had a headache with frequent rubbish that Vista comes up with. The firewall of windows has known to be notoriously weak within the geek circles.
The issues you describe can be put down to the developers not properly updating their softwares - whether an OS upgrade should lead to obsolescence is another debate. As for the applications you refer to, ZoneAlarm has been a disaster since v6.737 even on XP. v7 is supposed to Vista compatible but is garbage no matter what you install it on. I cannot comment on Symantecs products since I don't use them, however I suppose the issues there come from the issues with kernel patching which were enforced as part of the Trusted Computing initiative. Matlab 2007a and subsequent versions is fully Vista compatible.

The firewall in Vista is much better than the one-way one in XP. The real problem is that you need a PhD to get it working properly. By default OS services are protected both inbound and outbound preventing hijacking by malware (Blaster, SoBig etc), and programs are protected inbound but not outbound. Outbound protection can be configured but it is very complicated - more so than it should be. If you are behind a hardware firewall, the Vista firewall is more than enough, and if your sensible it shouldn't be a problem otherwise - I personally wouldn't make this recommendation for the XP firewall.

Other than flashy graphics I do not see any changes in Vista; even they come at a price of upgrading your processor and RAM. After spending so much money, I have to give up on other softwares as well, or purchase new 'compatible' ones.

Does is all sound 'user friendly?

I seriously hope the world turns to open source and dumps MS for good!:p
(But jokes apart, MS has given us quite a lot of flexibility/comfort in the past. But the new Vista sure gave me a headache)
I agree, that there is nothing special about Vista. I would describe it as nothing more than an incremental improvement over XP. There are several good things I can say about Vista compared to previous versions of Windows. Primarily, the security architecture is much better - a proper implementation of admin/standard user permissions through UAC (it does have issues, but as a security measure it is commendable), Address-Space-Layout-Randomisation (ASLR), Application Isolation and several others. The reality is that MS should have implemented these years ago when everyone else did. Better late than never I suppose.

Dave
 
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