What's Windows Vista Worth? Play Guy's Guesstimating Game. - Page 2

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I dunno much about Linux but I'd like to know more. I know that Fedora core is a nice graphical version. If I were to just use basic programs like word programs, spreadsheets, etc. I'd might go the Linux route. But how does it work with modern games? Are most games/programs compatible with it? This is really the only reason I haven't deepy looked into Linux because I don't know what kind of compatibility it has. If someone wants to shed some light, maybe you can convert me! :-)

PS - Ya know what else, ever since I installed Vista (I dual boot), my games in XP are unstable. Don't ask me how that's possible since they are on entirely two different hard drives...But before I installed it BF2 and Company of Heros was fine. Now I get kicked out of BF2 and my comp restarts, and Company of Heros gets an error and shuts down about 20 min into gameplay. What the hell?

Yep.. then you can hear all the rhetoric from Linux users that you could ever care to ..

Oh please.. you know none of that is required. Vista RC1 ran just the same as XP (performance wise) on my current XP machine.

I'm not taking the easy way out. As I've said before, I use SuSE Linux. I use Wine AND Cedega. Both are ALMOST solutions. But, as always, I find myself migrating back to my WinXP box because the software runs better on it and that's where THE software exists.

As for 'how good' Linux is, it's a moot point. It does not offer me anything over what Windows offers me now. I am speaking as an everyday user of Linux. You can extoll the virtues of Linux all day long, but at the end of it all, spending any time or effort migrating to that platform (entirely) offers me no advantage.

I mean, honestly, if I were to ditch Windows entirely, other than having a FREE alternative, what have I gained? My LAN/VPN are as secure as any other, so don't try to sell me on security.

The EASY way out is to just constantly trash the main stream OS just because it's main stream. Or better yet, as many other people have done on this thread, call others an advertiser/marketer for Microsoft just because they are happy to use it.

If/when I run Vista it will be on a new machine that comes with Vista. So, the cost factor is irrelevant to me. My current XP machine is ~ 4 years old anyhow.

When will this big Linux revolution occur such that I can earn a LIVING with it? Again, as I have mentioned previously, I am a software engineer/developer focusing on C#/.NET development. This has a lot to do with the fact that EVERY business I deal with uses Windows machines. Until something changes this, if I want to make money I will continue to use Windows.

In regards to Vista DX10 and DRM:

Is it just me or does it seem like the solution to this (at least for the next couple of years) is to run a dual boot XP / Vista system? Run Vista for gaming (to use DX10) and XP for all media (to avoid stupid DRM). I think that this seems like the best way to go until media starts to require either Vista or the DRM software that comes with it.

*Warning DRM rant*
<rant> I pretty much refuse to use DRM controlled media. The music industry does not support my desired consumer model. I want to be able to download all of the music I want for free and buy the albums for the bands that I really like. This is how things work right now and it is awesome. The amount of music I purchase is directly proportional to the amount of music I download. I own hundreds of CDs, most of which are from bands that I would never have heard of without free internet downloads. I think that the reason the music industry doesn't like that is because I don't necessarily buy what they are marketing, in fact most of the music I own is either indy, or from smaller labels (trustkill, victory, roadrunner, ferret, etc). That being said, I download many movies (mostly because they take too long to get to video) and buy very few (I rarely want to watch a movie more than once). </rant>

In how much time do you suppose games will switch to exclusively Vista? I heard DX9 and 10 are meant to coexist for a long time. Might as well buy a cheap XP on a new build and only buy an Upgrad version of Vista when I /really/ need it some years down the line.

I see virtually nothing in Vista that you can't either download as shareware and that Mac didn't do years earlier.

The next major relese of Mac OS, though, will be the nail in Microsoft's coffin. Why? Because the current version runs on Intel processors, and the next will run on non-Apple hardware.

$100. And supports dual-boot for your legacy games. Cleaner, faster, easier to use, crashes less. Requires no major hardware upgrades, and there's no nanny-ware. As it is, I recently installed XP Pro on a machine and spent an hour yanking services out of the OS. One of them is a built-in spyware that is an open door for the government to get into your box anytime it wants. (lsass.exe and a couple of others that are built-in and nearly impossible to remove)

In one day I noticed a constant 5-10% traffic over the net on a clean install of windows with a good firewall running. Even with the ports supposedly blocked(though not in emergency zero activity mode).

That took 15 minutes. Removing Outlook Express/disabling active-x scripting took another 10 minutes. Installing a firewall that blocked all ports by default, a few more minutes...

Removing Windows ability to make logs of everything you do - tougher - 20 minutes.(it creates hidden, even from a DOS boot, files of every site you visit, every email, and so on - probably put there at our government's request). You delete your email in Outlook? It's still there. This is simmilar to how cellphones don't really delete their contents(making the news now) - but Windows has been doing this for years.

(required a Nopix CD boot and manually crippling the hidden files, then cripping the function in windows itself) And by hidden, I mean, yes, hidden from any version of DOS or Windows(though not from a few specific utilities you can download). Really nasty stuff.

Rendering the nanny-ware call-home feature disabled - five more minutes.

Just getting a clean, stable, secure from the outside world setup of XP is daunting.

Vista is going to be ten times worse. Mac, on the other hand, does virtually none of this insanity. If I want to just get online and do normal things other than gaming, it's a total no-brainer decision. If it only costs me $100 and I can keep XP/Win2K/etc running for the few older games I have - on the same box.... DUH.

I value Vista at $0. It's a security and privacy nightmare.

I agree with you that more home users need to be made aware of Linux. thankfully, most people are open to or at least aware of OpenSource now through IE doing such a bad job it made it easy for Firefox to get a foothold.

Chances are Vista being so crappy will help Linux awareness quite a lot, although the problem is 90% of people aren't 'PC-aware' and just use what comes preloaded even if its junk, thats the biggest reason why 90% still use windows. That and the fact they're already familiar with it because chances are they also use it at work.

Why they're gonna choose to pay $300 for a Vista downgrade for a machine already running XP is a different matter though.

Microsoft will be able to sell Vista downgrade editions because we all know many consumers are also absolute sheep and have been conditioned to think new == better and higher cost == higher quality.

How many people stick with Vista after they've experienced it and don't either reinstall XP or move on to Linux is the real question.

to be frank, Linux systems have been, user-wise, crappy - until the past year or so. What happened?
- first, the 2.6 version of the Linux kernel. Much more supple and responsive, it now includes enough interesting stuff to make it 'set and forget': automatic modules loading, new device notification, etc. finally make it truly plug n play - not forgetting that new modules now integrate it much faster, leading to better hardware support.
- second, HP supporting and releasing source code for its whole range of printers - suddenly, those got plug n play too (I can testify of this: I plugged a small Deskjet on a USB port, and instantly my system detected it, installed cups, downloaded and installed the printer's driver, and had it running - I needed a single click to accept/deny the install procedure)
- third, X finally getting modular: this allows all sorts of experiments and yet easy install (X can now autodetect the mouse, the graphic card's driver and the display's resolution, and it contains accelerated drivers for many current chips built-in)
- fourth, the free desktop project and Linux Standard Base: it's gotten way easier to run software on a Linux system
- fifth, OS-agnostic softwares having reached mainstream: Openoffice.org 2.0, Firefox, Thunderbird.

In fact, since the beginning of 2005, the Linux desktop has very quickly turned from a nerd's interface into a very sexy and intuitive GUI: frankly, you can simply forget about the command line now - however it's still there and as powerful as ever.

It's gotten so good that now, if you connect your iPod to it, it will detect it, install an iTune replacement, and allow you to use it with hardly any intervention from you.

I agree with you entirely. As I said in a previous post, Vista RC1 runs just as well on my current XP box as XP does. My system is just a P4 2.53 Ghz, 1 Gig of Ram, and GF4 Ti4200.

That was a good read,
Lots of interesting new features espeacially on the security side, very nice indeed. With that type of security who need Linux/Unix anymore.
I found something interesting, which I'm sure the Workshop Manager at my old job will start crying when he sees...

The hell he used to go throught to get customers to give him the passwords to fix the machine, and 99% percent wont have any idea about what he was talking about, and that was just a login password. (At an OEM supplier).

I really enjoyed that articlie, hats off. to the author.

However I developed a rather bitter taste in the mouth after reading the conclusion.

Though the price sounds descent for a Microsoft product, that conclusion put me off from purchasing Vista. Sounds like Microsoft paid the author to write that conclusion.

$245/year? should last three years? Sounds a little flakey to me.

Windows XP has gone strong for 5 years now. And I must say its become quite a mature operatin system as years gone by.
Is there something I am missing, or is Vista designed to run for only 3yrs?

There is 1 factor that was not included in the article.
Peace of Mind
Peace of Mind that on Vista, 1+1 will equal 2 7days a week, 365days a year, again and again and again.

This factor can not be added to the article as this feature is Priceless....

And for this reason my office will continue to use Linux and BSD as we have developed that peace of mind. We have faith that if any of our protocls fail it is for a hardware reason only.
The peace of mind that has been developed at the company I work for has translated to an uptime of 99.1% for IPX switching systems in Australia, Poland and Canada.

It will take a long time for Microsoft to "truly" gain the trust of the Mission Critical IT Sector.

Niz... exactly. In fact, even when using XP I tend to use the Windows Classic theme just because the menus in XP and everything wasted too many pixels on fluff. I can't imagine how much worse it will be with Aero.

In the end, however, the value of Vista comes down to comparison. Microsoft has a huge economy of scale, and yet you can buy OSX for $129 or a 5 pack for $199. Now, I have 3 computers at home, one of them a domain controller. Are you telling me that it would cost $1,200 to upgrade my home to the most 'advanced' edition?

That is not only insane, it is stark raving mad.

Thank you very much, I'll be using Linux. The only problem is that I will have to dual-boot with Vista just so I can run Office and a couple other aps that I am sure that people will expect me to have just because I tend to work in places that use Windows, and that irritates me.

I just wish that open office could handle document formatting and bullets in any reasonable way (you can't adjust the space inbetween bullets and text, and for that matter bullets and the left margin anywhere near as well as you can in Office).

I wish Microsoft would just release one version and charge $150 for it, and maybe $300 for a 5 pack. You would see piracy evaporate in a huge way simply because then it would be REASONABLY affordable to actually buy Windows.

With the new release scheme? Sadly enough, it makes Windows even more of an insane ripoff joke.

Then again I still use 2000 simply because why upgrade to XP? I don't dwell on the OS features, the OS is nothing more than something that lets me run the applications that I want to on my computer and enables me to network with other computers. Even though I use XP at work I have never once felt like I was missing out on anything.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU CAN BUY A COMPUTER FOR LESS THAN VISTA ULTIMATE, AND THEN YOU ACTUALLY GET SOMETHING THAT COST MONEY TO MANUFACTURE EACH INDIVIDUAL TIME, INSTEAD OF SOMETHING THAT IS MADE ONCE AND THEN DUPLICATED AS MANY TIMES AS DESIRED!!!

That's insane.

well, about Openoffice, Sun does what it can: dedicate developers. If you want to improve it, you're free to try your had at programming. Or at the very least, do some bug reporting.

Don't forget to try more recent versions: bullets and numbered lists get steady improvements in recent releases (try again with 2.0.4 RC1...).

Well, many of the 'big' games Doom, Quake, unreal tournament etc. all have native ports to linux (freely downloadable if they're not already on the disk) so work perfectly under Linux (often at faster/higher framrates than windows).

For games that don't have native Linux ports, there is Cedega, which is a commerical version of wine+directx. Most but not all windows games run on it with varying degrees of success. They're always working to improve it and they target all the most popular games first. Most of the most popular windows games work fine under it.

Actually I read a post from one of the wine devs a whila ago that said they'd done most of the windows framework so now could focus more on DirectX support in Wine itself. Presumably at some point Wine will catch up with Cedega in terms of functionality and we'll all have free Linux compatabilty for most windows games too.

Thank you very much, I'll be using Linux. The only problem is that I will have to dual-boot with Vista just so I can run Office and a couple other aps that I am sure that people will expect me to have just because I tend to work in places that use Windows, and that irritates me.
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You can get Office for Mac. It works great, in fact. The thing is that people for years have always liked PC for cost, and Mac for OS - but with this last release(and it is UNIX, btw, albeit the world's fanciest version of it - heh) it runs on Intel chips. All Macintosh computers now are running Intel chips and they just released a new vrsion of Bootcamp that finally does allow for dual-boot. Win XP/2K for your games, Mac OS for everything else - and honestly, it does EVERYTHING ELSE. Yet, there are a few apps you need PC - well, presto - reboot and enjoy.

The next version, though, is amazing. No more Apple hardware.

From an IT perspective:
Apple/Unix - $60 a copy when bought in bulk. No hardware upgrades required. Legacy apps supported via XP or 2K or NT on second partition. No registration, nanny-ware, virtually no viruses and mal-ware to deal with for normal applications. Versions of every major product for office use available for the same price(or better, since Apple gives massive discounts to businesses and educational institutions).

And all using the same hardware you have. You don't even have to add memory to any of them. Works with your ancient laptops and your servers. You can even keep your SQL server running windows 2K/NT if you want.

20 computers. 12 PCs, 4 laptops, 4 server machines. One person to manage it all. No calling home, no yearly fees. Just an OS that you use as you wish. Also, dead-simple to repair and fix. Just drop in a new OS folder and rearrange a few things(15 minutes tops) and presto - back in business.

Total cost to upgrade/install new OS for 20 machines? $800.
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Windows -
16 copies of Vista. 4 new laptops(since upgrading older laptops isn't an option). 16 machines need new memory and a few need new power supplies, video cards, hard drives, and so on. 4 servers require the full-blown mega version of Vista(OUCH).

New firewall software, big changes to the servers, new version of SQL if you use it... new versions of most of your apps or upgrades(that is if you bought legitimate copies of everything for every computer, which most businesses don't)

And you need two peolpe to manage 20 computers and the network. Horrendous phase-in schedule and back-end work.

Total cost to upgrade 20 machines? $20K or more, plus all the nanny-ware and the extra person you pay salary to.

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DUH. Microsoft should be giving their OS away for nearly free, because the second that you can run Mac and PC on the same box without any upgrade(and UNIX if you want to go for seamless tri-boot), people will ditch them in a heartbeat. Cheaper, faster, company that's not burning their bridges... Mostly, though... cheaper. And just look at Wal-Mart. Cheaper is the #1 factor in business.

Me? I have a copy of XP Pro I bought a few months ago. It will serve me for years while at the same time I run Mac OS or Unix and phase our my legacy apps.(90% of which are games). In five years, none of my old games will be worth playing anyways or will have UNIX/Mac ports of them(like Unreal Tournament). I'm never touching Vista since every last app and game for the next five years will have to support XP anyways or loose massive potential sales.

Cost to me will be a paltry $100 or less. And Apple is a great company to work with as a business owner or customer compared to Microsoft. Customer service is worlds better than a decade ago.

The other option to dual boot is to run Windows apps in a virtual machine on OSX or Linux. The Parallels Virtual machine software runs $50-$80. The other option is VMware. They are in beta with the OSX version of their software. It will probably cost a bit more but you can create a VM machine and then use their free VMPlayer to run in on whatever, wherever. You can download the player and try out various flavors of Linux right now. The nice thing about running Windows as a VM is that you can create a VM just strip out a lot of the services and junk so it is lean and fast. And bonus features: security and easy to "reinstall" from a VM file backup.

Not sure Xen is ready for the rest of us but that's another option that will be available on the Linux desktop soon. When VMware and Xen get their act together and the hypervisor interface technology gets embedded in the Linux kernel things will get even more interesting.

Amen brother. Bout time some one said it. WindowsXP is so rediculously power hungry now that I can't even imagine having to deal with Aero and Vista. The more I use linux and OSX the more I like the idea of open source software. Things that suck, (because they were developed by a programmer at M$ who had 'read' about how end customers used their machines) never float. They're immediately replaced by a better one. Its capitalism, well really free-market style, at its best. Survival of the fittest, if it is sub-par it gets trampled by the things that can do it better. Take the x windows environment in linux, for example. I can think of at least a half dozen window managers right now, that were all developed because someone said after using another one, "Woah man, this sucks." Since M$ can (and does) play pretty good business hardball, they're still in there, otherwise I think that computational darwinism should have caught up to them by now. Either way, they're living on borrowed time. Right here we have a forum full of real XP/NT/Whatever users that are putting it out there loud and clear that the 570 "features" aren't worth a dime to us. And what did we all learn in Econ 101? The customer is No. 1. If you don't deliver, they'll go somewhere else. Its too bad that so many of us can't (myself included), darn games are holding me back.

You can run Windiows with Xen?

Yep .. I got Office 2000 working quite well with Wine. At least, Excel and Word worked fine.

Macs are overpriced? First piece of real news here! They're for the 'elite', those who don't want to have Joe Sixpack's computer!

Jokes apart, it's true that Macs are indeed overpriced. However, for having used several in different occasions, I must contrast this with the fact that hardware-wise, Macs are damn straight and tightly run, and actually built to last - which isn't the case with most cheapo PCs. In fact, to reach the hardware quality you get in a Mac with a PC, then you need to put up pretty much the same amount of cash.

A VW Golf II cost more or less the same as a 1992 Ford Escort - which is bigger, with a heavier engine. The VW still runs well, the Ford has already collapsed into a pile of rust. See the difference? Note: I've owned both. Still have the VW - after 453 000 km. The Ford collapsed at 192 000 - due to clutch rupture, gearbox meltdown, body work half eaten away by rust...

Paint a pretty picture all you want. I'm only pointing out that the same people who say Vista isn't worth the cost don't mind mentioning the Mac which is already costing too much. As I said, for the price of a Mac desktop/laptop, I can get an equivalent or BETTER PC from the likes of Dell/HP/Compaq and an ADDITIONAL 2-3 copies of Vista.

I have had MANY generic/home-built PC's in my life and I have never had one 'die.' So, I think your car analogy is way off the mark (not to mention your one example isn't indicative of every Ford). But, if that's what it takes for you to think paying twice as much for a Mac is reasonable, go right ahead. Also, the general function of a car hasn't changed since its inception. The hardware requirements for PC's change all the time. No matter how 'built to last' a PC/Mac/whatever is, it's a moot point. I still have my Amiga 500 from Sept 1990. It still works flawlessly. But guess what? It's still pretty much a door-stop to me at this point. The same is true for my old DX4-100 (or 120, I forget) PC. It never stopped working, but with only ISA expansion available, I still put it on the curb.

As a side note, I find it funny that people who like Macs always seem to like VW's as well .. very strange correlation .. it must be the perceived 'cutesy' factor.

At the end of the day, you can attempt to rationalize the exorbitant price of a Mac, but it's just an exercise in futility. If Apple releases their OS to the mainstream and it runs on non-Apple hardware, then yes, the cost argument goes out the window if it is far cheaper than Windows. But, I really can't see that happening as it would directly affect their hardware sales, and that's where they make their money.

In 1998 VMware started to make virtualization products to run on x86 chips without any hardware or native OS support. in the last couple of years virtualization has gotten hot as it allows enterprises to consolidate and better manage servers and save lots of money so Intel and AMD have started building support for virtualization into their chips. I'm not sure when the first chips appeared, probably around early 2006. The support in the chip makes the virtualization process easier and more efficient. Going forward this will become a standard feature of all chips and I think additional support will be added. Virtualization support is also being baked into operating systems.

BTW, IBM was doing this stuff on mainframes 30-35 years ago. What's new is the implementation of virtualization on x86 hardware.

Here's links to Intel and AMD pages:
http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processor [...] 87,00.html

Hmm.. didn't mean to belittle you at all. I value your opinion and enjoy talking to you, believe it or not.

I don't think Macs are expensive. They are over-priced though. In my mind, that makes something a piece of crap.

I still don't see the connection you're making here. Macs use the same parts (now anyhow) as PC's. Apple goes to the same vendors as Dell/HP/Compaq (IE Taiwanese manufacturers typically) for their motherboards and other parts. If I take apart my shiny new over-priced Mac and see that it has an ASUS motherboard, where did all my extra money go? If I take apart my old Dell system and see that it has the SAME motherboard, I'd then start to feel like a real sucker.

Any analogy you throw out there is going to miss the mark. The extra expense of the Mac doesn't provide any value in the long term (or short term), unlike cars or whatever else. I would be willing to pay a little more for a VW Jetta since it is rated the 'safest' car/sedan out there. But, at least there is a perceived benefit to the extra money I plunk down. I would never even get that perceived benefit if I shelled at $1100 for an IBook with 13.1" screen, integrated graphics (GMA950), and 256 megs of RAM. I don't know about you, but I get a queesy feeling in my stomach when I feel like I spent WAY too much on something. Just the thought of owning a Mac gives me the same feeling.

It seems like all VW cars are cutesy ...

You know, I think that once OSX is available for non-Mac hardware, the price will go up considerably. It will just be either thrown in or sold at a discount for users who continue to buy Mac branded PCs. They would drive away too much of their own hardware business if they didn't do this.