Your opinion of Vista ?

[ynneb]

For those who have been living under a rock, Microsoft has recently released its new operating system to replace XP.
From what I have read in many places, most people are giving it negative reviews. While it does have some advantages, these are heavily out weighed by its negatives.

What do you think ?

You may pick two selections if you want.

[Graham Waterworth]

I don't think anybody should be allowed remote access to users computers for any reason. According to what I have read Vista wont install unless you let Microsoft snoop at will.

Graham.

[Chaoticone]

I think remote assist is a great tool if both parties are aware and want to use it. I have been on both ends of remote assist, giving and receiving. I had a friend in the UK tutor me on a program via remote assist and Skype. Another friend down under helps me all the time, they have taught me a lot those two jokers have. I have also got to help others with remote assist. You can cover so much ground quickly. However, if it is to be set so that Microsoft can come and go freely in and out of my PC without me knowing it, H_ _ L NO  .

Graham, do you have any links to the info about remote access?

Brett

[Graham Waterworth]

The bit I read was on CNCZone, some IT bloke was having a real good rant about it, its all in the end user licence that MS can come and go as they please.

I will have a look for it later and post the link.

Graham.

[Graham Waterworth]

Sorry it was not CNCZone it was Yahoo, here is a link,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mach1mach2cnc/message/68619

I have been looking for more detail , none yet, when I have it I will tell you.

Graham.

[Peters]

It's clear there are many people that like to bash Microsoft and people love to scream the sky is falling.

First, I have two machines running Mach 3 on windows XP. There is no need to change the OS and I have no plans to.

I did just upgrade my office machine. If you want to load Vista make sure there are drivers for your hardware and you are
running a pretty new machine with a fast processor and lots of memory. A basic $500 machine is not going to cut it. Then
be ready to update the rest of your software (Virus protect, CD burner, Office, ...).

So far it has been a simple upgrade with no issues. We will see after a few more weeks of use.

       Steve

[Haik]

Vista is an important upgrade and for a great many reasons.  The most oustanding being that in the coming 2-3 years support for XP (sp2) will diminish below a point where users may find it not feasible to contend with.
I have this problem with Windows2000.  The HCL (hardware compatability list) just keeps getting shorter and shorter as devices enter the market.
XP is quite a bit faster than 2000. Similarly, the Vista kernel is more advanced and more efficient than XP meaning that it's faster than XP.
Just look at SolidWork's example; they've worked closely with Microsoft over the past 4 years so that they could integrate WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) 3D features into their softwares.
This 3D stuff in Vista is really awesome stuff and helps pave the way 3D object modeling for all. Designers, CAD, and CAM communities are the first to truly benefit from it.
Sure Vista is new and has features that some won't appreciate... but it has been 5 years since the last release and Vista is now the current version.
Good, bad, or indifferent it's time to embrace the future!

-Haik
btw - I've been using Vista (Ultimate) on a Desktop machine and a laptop with great results.

[ridesideways]

I am a 15 year veteran software engineer.  The truth is that Microsoft software is a hulking obsolete giant at it's core, with lots of pretty visual/audio media skin deep.  If Microsoft came into existence today as a new company and presented Vista to the software engineering world as a new Operating System, Microsoft would be laughed off the planet and not given a second thought.  If you ever get a chance to run an operating system that's a true technical marvel (such as Linux), you'll discover straight away how faster your computer really is without XP's hulking boat anchor at it core weighing it down.  The fact is that Microsoft survives because their marketing group successfully schemes to maintain a near monopoly in the world of operating systems-- their success categorically has nothing to do with technical superiority.

That said, I currently run Windows XP (as opposed something like Linux) because I'm forced to since Microsoft maintains the near monopoly and there are so few applications for other operating systems.  Then, I'll run Vista after it's been out for about a year-- because I'll be forced to.

[mhdale]

I recently bought a new system and it came with XP 64 which is the precursor to Vista... it was fine as an OS but it wasnt compatable with almost all of our peripherals and software so we tried Vista to see if it would be better, *Big Sigh* not much. Our peripherals were supported but only in the most basic form, none of the nice features that you bought the hardware for. And to top it all off our design software which is only a year old would not even install on it... so my feeling is it was very very pretty, and in the future I can see it being perhaps a bit better but the lack of support NOW really is shoddy.
My two and a half cents!

Mike

[Graham Waterworth]

I bought a new laptop for one of the guys at work, it had vista home premium on it for 10 days, it now has XP home on it, nothing would run on it, every time we tried to install something it told us it was not the correct version and would not run correctly,  the 'do you know what you are doing screens got on his wick, it would have cost us hundreds in updates if we could have got them.

The laptop is now running at twice the speed (if not more) and all our existing software runs. Vista is a joke at the moment, and will be for a long time to come. Never again.

By the way, Dell has gone back to XP on its computers as sales dropped so rapidly.

Graham.