It has to end here...

[mattx]

I use them for target pratice.

 

I do have a few in the office though - sometimes students ask about them. I fire one off, and then ask the student what software they use on their PC / laptop. I then task them to go and research on the internet, to find software which will do something similar on an Apple Mac. To be blunt many of them give up within 30 mins.

I then allow them to point to the Apple Mac and laugh at it like Nelson Muntz.

If they want, I even allow them to kick it whilst on the way out....

[Joanne]

did apple do something really bad to you once mattx?

 

I don't favour them, but i don't hold a vendetta against them either!

[mattx]

did apple do something really bad to you once mattx?

 

Don't think so, I just find their products sh1t. Steve Jobs is also a bit of a pr1ck, full of himself and a nasty piece of work. You just need to check out how he treated one of his first girlfriends, his staff and his attitude towards people.

I've used many many different IT OS's over the years, in fact most of them, even AIX and I have to say the Apple stuff I found the most closed.

[Joanne]

I will look him up! Sounds like an interesting read... has anyone done his biography?

[Dos_Box]

I will look him up! Sounds like an interesting read... has anyone done his biography?

 

Just a few. Try going on YouTube and look up 'The Pirates of Silicon Valley' for the Jobs\Gates story.

[mattx]

look up 'The Pirates of Silicon Valley' for the Jobs\Gates story.

 

Quite a good film that - a bit OTT in places but quite good. I have a copy of that somewhere, must dig it out.....

[contink]

.. but having it now run on my Quad Core Q6600 its fine.

Frustrating though that it requires such a heavy duty system to run effectively though.

 

Making the network controls more complicted than they really need to be

My father recently reported another issue for dial-up users. Apparently he found that dialup profiles setup correctly in the networking system will not work (gives login auth error) if you startup internet explorer and try to auth through it. Not tried to validate or recreate this error myself but Dad's reached the point of sobbing when I mention Vista now.

 

 

Ultimately I fail to see exactly what benefit there is to Vista beyond "it looks pretty". Everything else is just a confusing decision to chuck away established labels and procedures and replace them with ones that frankly make little or no intuitive rational.

[Guest metalmonkey]

I've had more break-ups with Vista than I care to remember, but I discovered one thing that makes Vista usable. The problem isn't vista, it was me. I was always trying to compare Vista with XP because thats the way I liked it. Once I changed my mindset and accepted Vista as a new OS with new features, it's good. Not fantastic, but good all the same.

 

I started with Vista in Jan 07, used it for 2 months and gave up.

I then used it in July for about month and went back to XP. (don't get me started on drivers)

 

Both those times I was trying to use it on my 3.2 P4 with 2gb ram and 256 ATI 9600 gfx card.

 

In September I built myself a new Q6600 Quad 2.4 beast of a machine and again, bought Vista Ult OEM (yup - ashamed to admit, i've had to buy it twice)

 

Vista flys now even with Aero on - and anyone who knows me, will know I'm a stickler for grey-scale 98x style.

 

To be honest, I kinda forget i'm using vista a lot of the time - which I think is a good thing in some sence.

 

Of course, we could all argue on the why's, how's, and who's but at the end of the day, Vista is like a bad smell. It's here to stay. We'll have to jump eventually. In my job, I can't afford principles - if i do, someone else will take my job.

[webman]

And was all the expense (new PC, 2x Vista) really worth it, for flying and wooshing and transparent windows and slow copying of files?

[Guest metalmonkey]

No. But then I didn't buy the new PC for Vista. I bought Vista for the new PC.

 

£109 quid on top of a new PC, really doesn't make much difference, when it keeps me on top of a new OS.

[enjay]

Vista is coming - deal with it, guys. You can like it or not at your discretion, and we could talk the Windows-vs-Mac-vs-Ubuntu debate for ever, but at some point our sites will go Vista so we might as well get it on our own PCs now, discover the differences and learn how to use them (rather than just gripe that it doesn't look like XP), identify the bugs, find out in plenty of time what apps/hardware won't work so you can plan for the upgrade/replacement, and - armed with that information - be able to steer the eventual and unavoidable deployment (or of course decide that it sucks and convince SMT to go open source, but let's face it that's not likely to happen...)

[Joanne]

ouch!

[originofsymmetry]

Vista doesn't run faster with Aero, thats an illusion. When its disabled and you open a folder it takes a second or two to fill with the contents, have Aero on and windows take bout a second to open with the fading and what not so by the time it opens, the content has aswell as the job has been split between processor and gpu. And it looks gorgeous, macs look really childish in terms of graphics to me (all bouncy), Aero looks more professional imo.

 

File copying is unforgivabely slow but hey its new, it'll be fixed up in time. I do agree with the Network controls though, constantly forgetting to turn on Network Discovery, as bad as UAC in my opinion.

 

I'm getting a Compaq laptop for Christmas and can't wait to give it a proper going over. I;m one fo the few never to have a driver error, bsod or anyfin really, I;ve been lucky

[GrumbleDook]

I have to admit that Vista is reasonably stable, pretty much the same speed as a fully patched XP box (after you have applied a few custom bits on the themes for XP) and I have only had one driver problem ... and that was a rather naff Lexmark.

 

Oh ... it runs best in Boot Camp on a Mac Book Pro ... better than the Dells I've tried it on, the Acers, the Toshibas ...

 

But yes ... the best and worst thing about Apple is indeed Mr Jobs ... even the people that love him breath a sigh of relief that Bill Gates got in there first ... just imagine what it would have been like if Apple hadn't been the underdogs, trying to use style as a selling point, pushing the rest of the industry to rethink how they do things.

 

We would have Quadra clones on our desks now instead!

[mac_shinobi]

Vista is coming - deal with it, guys. You can like it or not at your discretion, and we could talk the Windows-vs-Mac-vs-Ubuntu debate for ever, but at some point our sites will go Vista so we might as well get it on our own PCs now, discover the differences and learn how to use them (rather than just gripe that it doesn't look like XP), identify the bugs, find out in plenty of time what apps/hardware won't work so you can plan for the upgrade/replacement, and - armed with that information - be able to steer the eventual and unavoidable deployment (or of course decide that it sucks and convince SMT to go open source, but let's face it that's not likely to happen...)

 

Not at this school not yet anyway and as for trying it on my own machine well lets just say im not forking out 500 quid for one louzy vista license ( I would much rather put 500 quid on an apple mac ).

 

I mean you can get a mac mini for 500 quid and 500 quid pays off most of the cost of a mac book.

 

Im not saying vista is exactly 500 quid btw , last time I checked I think it was actually 400 quid but still, thats a lot of money just to buy the operating system compared to OS X ( now leopard ) which only costs about 90 quid ?

 

Just my opinion, whether you agree or not is down to your own discretion

[mac_shinobi]

Tried it and hated it. That reminds me anyone want to buy my Vista Ultimate upgrade disks?

 

My Point exactly - There are better things to spend money on then vista

[Dos_Box]

If there is a new version of Windows due in less than 2 years time I for one would hold my breath and wait for that. Remember Windows ME anyone?

They did it once, they could do it again.

Would you let your end users loose with Vista?

[mac_shinobi]

If there is a new version of Windows due in less than 2 years time I for one would hold my breath and wait for that. Remember Windows ME anyone?

They did it once, they could do it again.

Would you let your end users loose with Vista?

 

I'm sure they would do it again dos box and letting users loose with vista -- hhmmm NO lol

 

M$ Does it again :

 

http://technodigits.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/vistaerror.jpg

[contink]

Vista is coming - deal with it, guys. You can like it or not at your discretion, and we could talk the Windows-vs-Mac-vs-Ubuntu debate for ever, but at some point our sites will go Vista

Actually there's absolutely no guarantee and frankly it's this "There's no choice, we're hostage to this" that does absolutely nothing to encourage MS or anyone else to get with the program.

 

I've already written 4 year plans for most of my schools and Vista is in year 3 or 4 and it has a big question mark next to it because I see absolutely no benefit to using it in a schools environment at all. The fact that professionals such as ourselves are going backwards instead of forwards should speak volumes at this point.

 

so we might as well get it on our own PCs now, discover the differences and learn how to use them (rather than just gripe that it doesn't look like XP), identify the bugs, find out in plenty of time what apps/hardware won't work so you can plan for the upgrade/replacement, and - armed with that information - be able to steer the eventual and unavoidable deployment (or of course decide that it sucks and convince SMT to go open source, but let's face it that's not likely to happen...)

It'd be professional suicide not to familiarise ourselves with the new system and learn its quirks but I for one am seriously looking at alternatives in ways I never seriously considered before. Granted it may not come down to a major change and Vista may well get in but I'm willing to bet that the next generation of MS OS's will have much more serious competition in the wings.

[webman]

Vista is coming - deal with it, guys. Blah blah there's no getting away from Vista etc etc etc

 

Not necessarily.

[Joanne]

s'ok for us RM types... we just get it with Connect 4.... still doesn't mean problem free, but better than going it alone!

[Michael]

The other day I was asked to setup a PC for a work colleague he bought for his kids for Christmas, and to ensure it was patched and had anti-virus installed etc..

 

It was the first time I have used Vista in its final state and although the visuals were very nice, it was incredibly slow compared to XP.

 

The thing that was really tedious (not sure what anyone else thinks) is the Vista hardware evaluation process. Incredibly long winded and this was running on an AMD 64 CPU!

 

I may start to use Vista when these become the norm!

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(28199)Intel-CPU-Core-2-Extreme-QX9650-Quad-Core.aspx

[Guest metalmonkey]

Thing is Michael, where was the PC purchased from?

 

The number of times i've seen Vista Ready PC's sold that would have trouble running XP with any great performance.

 

No kidding, I saw a "reputable" retailer seeling a Vista laptop with a 5,400rpm HDD and 512mb ram and claimed it's Vista Ready.

[PEO]

I'm sorry Vista, I really am. I've tried to like you, really I have. But it's just not working between us.

It's not the fact that it takes ages to copy a file\s with you, or the simple act of deleteting one makes you go into a catatonic trance.

We started off well, and once I'd disabled UAC and instant search to stop the massived amounts of disk thrashing you seemed to enjoy so much things improved.

We then settled down to several weeks of awkward bliss. Even though booting up and logging on was a lenghty process, and the sidebar was an annoyance for me personally you seemed to get on with life, albeit slower than my last love XP.

It's the little things you see. Things like hiding where everything used to live. Making the network controls more complicted than they really need to be (I even found it amusing when you disabled most of the services on my secon NIC because you thought that I didn't really want to span 2 networks).

So there it is. I'm going to swap you out this morning for my old flame. Sshe may be old and patchy, but she's reliable and more fleet of foot than you are.

And less of a nag!

 

Will she take you back???? 8O

 

I'm eyeing up her older sister!

 

 

Ooow dangeros!!

 

I have two on the go, XP and Ubuntu. I have great pleasure working on them both at the same time

[Michael]

@metalmonkey - It was a compaq.

 

I think the Vista Ready campaign is a gimmick really, because although 512MB of memory will run Vista (so I suppose it qualifies as Vista Ready), in reality we all know that it will run like a 386 operating at 33MHz.