Your opinion of Vista ?

[mhdale]

Yup That pretty much sums up my experience! I used to get offended by the Mac commercials with the Mac and PC talking. The really scary thing is the ones about Vista are so on the money! It asks you about everything!
Mike

[coogrrr]

Every time someone wants to post a "which is better MS or ?" or what do you think about MS this or that program. We all get into this heavy offense and defense of the windows product line. I will go back and get my printed pages of all of you bashing the ********* out of windows XP and rub it in your collective faces. I will get every paper about why the current flavor of Linux is better than the last flavor and why its better than windows.

If your a true low level coding expert I would say a few things you have not thought of. 1. Who is it exactly that you call when your free Ubuntu is crashing and you cannot get your 4 applications (not many more ever made) to work? 2. Which of you will stand up and tell me the name of the company they work at or have been to that has gone 75% or more to Linux? even in the server side?

Linux lovers why dont you run a real linux and install MAC/OS? oh wait cause it too is bloatware. Now here is the funny thing about bloatware. Your grandmom can use it with little difficulty at the moment it turns on. You think grandma and grandpa are going to flip on the KDE shell and ge to working? Also I program in 11 languages for everything from Windows and Linux/MAC OS to the web. Know which platform has the best tools for this?  Yep its not Linux or Mac. ITS WINDOWS the relavance of the version your on is stupid. You based win2k then you bashed WinXP now you bash Vista but you too will run it and you to will Bash Windows ??  operating system in the future once you see or hear of it the first time.

Get off your soap box get back to work or get a job whatever applies and use what O/S you want. But dont think for a minute that I cant hack your linux box or that your machine is faster to get your productivity done cause your wrong.

just my 2 O/S'es worth!

Coog

[Haik]

Hi mhdale,

About "It (Vista) asks you about everthing"... This is just a feature (named: UAC) and is easily turned off. If you feel you don't want the feature and do turn it off you'll have an unobstructed "XP'ish" experience.

See my post for full details: http://www.artsoftcontrols.com/forum/index.php?topic=2385.msg23290#msg23290

All,

I too use several OS brands and versions in a given work week, and I write both managed and unmanaged code.  Microsoft, Mac, Linux, etc... Whatever?!  These are the tools we have at our disposal; choose the best tool for your job and rock-it!  OS is less often the culprit compared to code running that makes illegal calls and throws unhandled exceptions.  I think many problems can be avoided when software authors have good test practices and create (test) harnesses and tools that exercise their code so the user/customer and the OS they're using doesn't have to.  Speaking for myself, I'm accountable for all the code I ship.

Fun stuff, eh? :-)

[mhdale]

Hbaba, Yes, like most things in windows there is usually a quick and simple way to turn it off, that is for the psuedo technically savvy. And coogrr you are absolutely right, Everybody bashes the new OS when it comes out, and to be truthful every time a new OS comes out it allways has some issues. My big beef is specifically with the marketing people and the strategies they use to drive the consumer product machine, and in this I think microsoft is as guilty as all the rest, if not more so. (My pet Peeve is that the best printer I have ever owned has limited function under Vista and X64 and HP doesnt plan on updating the drivers, I think because it was too good for the money! And they dont seem to offer a comparable product anymore.)
 And while I also agree that software SHOULD be purchased, the price on this new wondrous O/S is pretty steep, makes it very difficult for the small independant builder to compete when you pay as much for your O/S as you do for your hardware. The line between O/S core functionallity and unecessary junk has become very blurry. My extra 3 cents worth... 

[ClevelandPitbull]

I'm sure everyone is familiar with Microsoft's manner of doing things.  But if you look a little deeper and read some documentation of how they went about writing the programming for Vista, you will see that it is a far superior opperating system then anything in existance today.  They have reworked alot of the processes they use to display data and processes information.  Of course, everything isn't going to work for it yet.  But is that any reason to stay stuck in the past.  Life is about growth and progression, and this is where we're going.  So keep up, is my opinion.  I have used and abused Vista to a great degree.  The problems all have ways to get around until fixed. The service pack is coming soon (in Microsoft time).  And as far as the remote assist, it has helped me fix many problems.  It may ask you for permission a little much, but its a small price to pay.  Oh and I don't feel like paying money for something that looks like crap.  Bout time someone made something that looks decent.  (does some cool little tricks too)

[mhdale]

Its one thing to re-vamp the inside of an OS, and I agree 100% with everything you have said, but if you had 20K worth of software that you need to do you job which doesnt like to run on Vista I am sure you would be reluctant to switch as well. Granted anyone with a subscription or who is willing to "update" thier software suites will probably be happier for it, in the interm, in this instance (First time ever I might add) I am holding back. I DO have a quation for those who are using vista in a mixed environment, are there any issues with Win XP Pro and Vista getting along on the same network shaing files?

Cheers
Mike

[bowber]

I'll not be changing to Vista any time soon, not because I don't like MS OS's but because everyone I've talked to had said they have had problems and that it's not got anything that helps them get the jobs done any better than XP.
I liked 2000 better than XP but XP had quite a few items that were better/easier so I changed, it works and that's all I wanted it to do, I'm not interested in fancy graphics and twerly images etc, I want to do a job and I want to do it with the minimum of hastle.

Also to make an OS that doesn't work with peoples older equipment is plain stupid.

Steve

[mhdale]

I have recently discovered that Vista doesnt have native COM support. I am not sure I understand it exactly but it sounded like com support in Vista is only supported by third party drivers as in a sweeping statement along the same lines as "Nobody would even need more than 640K of Memory" Serial ports are not used by any devices any more. I have had a great deal of difficulty getting my new laptop which came with Vista to talk properly to a Servo Drive unit using a USB to Serial Adapter. I have tried several they all seem to want to use the Prolific Com driver but my info gets all garbled. Does anyone have any experience with Vista and a USB to Serial Device that works reliably? Any Tips/tricks to getting it to function? My Searches have shown a remarkable number of bad experiences with Vista and USB to Serial does anyone have some good ones?
Mike

[Jeff_Birt]

mhdale,

I think you just need to find a USB-Serial adapter with Vista drivers. A quick search turned up the following (searched for 'usb to serial Vista'):

http://www.usbgear.com/computer_cable_details.cfm?sku=USB2-4COM-M&cats=199&catid=199%2C469
http://www.cooldrives.com/usbtors9miad.html

I'm sure there are loads of others. Drivers are one of the big problems with Vista, not because of Vista, but because many drivers stink, and many companies don't believe in getting with the program and providing updated (and well written) drivers.

I just upgraded to a Vista laptop and can't, for-the-life-of-me ,understand all the hand wringing and belly aching some folks are doing about Vista. The install is easy, don't like UAC, turn it off. My biggest hurdle was finding/downloading/installing the video driver.

[sandiegoRC]

I've been a software engineer for nearly 20 years and run most systems at home (XP, Linux, BSD + a few more that most people have never heard of and I've written a few myself).

I've followed the development of Vista for over 10 years. Truth be told, there is very little fundamental difference amongst OSs. Most of what people think of an operating system is just some GUI interface running on top of a kernel (the real operating system), although MS sticks much of the GUI within the kernel (from what I understand) to improve performance. This also has the side effect of lowering security, stability, etc.

XP and Vista broke with MS's preceding offerings by running on top of a preemptable spatially protected kernel. This means that each program can only communicate with another by going through the kernel. It also means that when one application crashes, it doesn't, can't, affect any other application. This is hardware supported by all modern CPUs after the 386/486, 68020, PPC, MIPS, etc.

I recently purchased a new laptop with Vista and am highly unimpressed. I've only used it for a weekend really only use it for web surfing, but have seen nothing compelling for it. This has been argued for a couple of years as MS's weakness - that given XP runs on a secure kernel, albeit with a brain dead security model, what is really the point of upgrading? This is a serious problem for MS to keep a revenue stream going.

EVERYTHING that I have seen with Vista so far is cosmetic and could have been accomplished quite simply under XP with minor changes. The new security really isn't and in a few published reports still lags behind Apple and Linux. Apple by the way is UNIX - one of the 3 or 4 officially certified UNIX vendors.

The next version of Windows (where have you heard that before) is expected to be significantly different but moving everything out of the kernel except for the required stuff like memory management and tasking, but this is in the kernel, something that only programmers ever see. The part that most people consider the OS, the GUI, is really mostly kernel agnostic. Without too much difficulty one could run XP (or Vista) on the Linux or BSD (what OSX runs on atop) kernels.

So in the end, my impression after a week, and I'm hoping it will change, is that it's just another marketing gimmick to force people to upgrade as it will be ever so slightly incompatible with previous releases.