10 reasons not to get Vista

10 reasons not to get Vista
It's all too easy to get caught up in the million dollar marketing engine as we approach the consumer release of Windows Vista, so lets not forget that it isn't the second coming, and by all counts is an upgrade you can do without.

There are many lists out there on why to get Vista, so here's ours on why not to.

1. You don't actually need it -- No, think about this. Vista doesn't do anything you can't already do with XP. About the only significant shift requiring Vista is DirextX10, but as no titles support it yet and, according to John Carmack (the godfather of modern gaming) there's no need to yet either.

2. Cost $$ -- It's so blindingly obvious, most people will be blinded to it. You already have XP, and alternatives like Linux are free. If you really want to throw money away, go give it to a local charity.

3. On that note, it's outrageously overpriced -- at least in Australia. As revealed in the current APC, even after taking into account the profit margin Microsoft Australia previously applied to XP (as well as exchange rates, as you would expect), Australians are paying hundreds of dollars more for their copies than in the US. In fact, it's cheaper for Australians to buy Vista direct by mail order from the States. If you think Microsoft Australia is reaming us, vote with your wallet.

4. Upgrading hardware -- XP was demanding at release, but Vista more so. If you have an older machine that struggles with XP at the best of times, Vista is out of your ballpark unless you spend even more money to upgrade. If this is you, see point 1.

5. Driver support -- Key hardware like video and sound is crippled at the moment -- while Nvidia is working furiously to get a stable driver for the 8800 out by the 30th, there's still no SLI support for any of the Nvidia range. And thanks to the removal of hardware accelerated 3D sound in Vista, Creative's popular DirectSound based EAX no longer works at all, muting this feature for just about all gaming titles on the market today. Creative is in the process of coding a layer for its drivers to translate EAX calls to the OpenAL API which is seperate from Vista, but going by past experience with Creative drivers we won't see these any time soon.

6. Applications that don't work -- there's been plenty of coverage about applications that won't work without a vendor update. These include anti-virus, backup and security software such as those from Symantec, Sophos and ilk; CD and DVD burning tools like the suite from Nero need updated versions to work; and even basic disk management and partitioning tools such as Paragon's Hard Disk Manager are awaiting an update for Vista to be compatible. How many more will fail as Vista enters mainstream? Even Firefox has issues with Vista.

7. It's a big fat target -- with a new and untested in the global wild architecture, virus and malware authors are going to work overtime exploiting the holes Microsoft missed. In fact it's already happening. Loath though I am to use the word 'security' and 'Windows' in the same sentence, Windows XP has at least been patched to the hilt and can be used with a plethora of reasonably effective security tools that work now, without waiting for an update down the track.

8. UAC -- Oh yes, the Microsoft solution for an operating system where mutli-user was an afterthought. Sure, you can disable it, but the OS then makes it clear then that the onus is on the user for any damaging programs that got to run with permissions, rather than with Windows in the first place. If you do have it on, it is going to annoy the hell out of you. It pops up far too frequently, and even on a fast PC, the UAC screen takes too long to come up and disappear.

9. DRM -- And to a lesser degree TPM -- were made for the RIAAs and MPAAs of this world, and the even tighter integration of copy protection mechanisms and 'Windows Rights Management' into vista are nothing more than a liability to you, the user. This ComputerWorld piece says is succinctly: 'it's hard to sing the praises of technology designed to make life harder for its users.' As for TPM, this short animated video shows just how far the rabbit hole goes. And to think you pay for the privilege of having the use of media you purchased and own dictated by third parties, even on your own system.

10. The draconian license -- somehow, Microsoft has forgotten that it built its business from products that empowered its customers, not hampered them. Of course, we forget that Microsoft's customers aren't you and I, afterall (see point 9). Aside from the backward thinking that is licensing, and not actually owning, your software new terms with Vista include being able to transfer the license only once; half the limit compared to XP for Home Basic and Premium on how many machines can connect to yours for sharing, printing and accessing the Internet; limits on the number of devices that can use Vista's Media Center features; activation and validation governing your ability to upgrade hardware and use Windows itself; and outlawing the use of Home Basic and Premium with virtualisation software, and Ultimate only if DRM enabled content and applications aren't used. But then again, who reads these anyway?

Woohoo

That's the spirit

But it looks soooooo niiiiiiiceeeee .... and it has a million very usefull widgets like the woodoo doll and souch that i just cant live without ....

And i have the DX10 capable graphics card ... duh ...

I hope you realize that most of those issues have been addressed. Other than the cost, most all incompatibilities have been dealt with. The UAC can be turned off. Nvidia and ATI have had stable drivers for like 2 months now. Did you just copy this from another site?

yes harf.. i read it in a site and wanted to share it..it was a copy yes..
I agree with the idea of Maya about the widgets, visuals, yes it can be really nice but u know how much RAM u have to sacrifice for them? As a result, in my opinion i have still 2 years to buy vista or vista compatible hardware& sofware..maybe its time to try at least one time Linux.
i prefer to wait and see..
loool u have diect x 10 graphic card? hehe its useless for now

its not useless its just not living up to its full potential yet, but in a month or two that will change (for eg. Crysis is comming out) hihihi.
And if all goes well i will not have to change the card for a few years hihihi.

And the widgets dont eat so much of your RAM or bandwidth as konfabulaor to in XP (but you have to have at least 1G RAM)

I'm against Vista and it's not because of all those issues. It's just so obvious that they took XP and changed a little inside and made a new GUI (user interface) for it, just to make it look different, so that they could ask money for it.
Windows always get bigger and bigger and if they continue like this, soon we all need 4 gig to run it. They only add fancy things without cleaning the rubbish. Fortunately they know it themselves that they have to change this.
When Vista came out, I've read on the microsoft website that the biggest security improvement were IE7 and Defender. Ok, if THAT is going to help them...

My brother has Vista and except for the fancy looks and the annoying popups, I didn't see much change with XP. I'm quite sure that most of the things I use in my "speedup XP guide" I can reuse for a "speedup Vista guide".
I don't deny that there will be some advantages with Vista (e.g. DX 10), but I don't pay so much money for it. I want performance, no fancy looks. So needing 1 GB ram, just to run my OS decently, is in my opinion ridiculous.

For 3 years I use Linux for everything, except gaming (although there are some games that play very well on linux). I find it just perfect. If i need a program, i just search it and install it. I have everything I need and much more without paying. Windows is really behind: Vista has finally IPv6 support, while Linux has it already for years. Something I really miss in windows is SSH.

Schizo (or others that want to try linux), if you want to try Linux, I recommend Ubuntu. It is very easy, even easier than windows. You install the OS and that's it, you don't need to install the newest driver, it's all automatic. If you need help, you may always ask me. They also have a great support forum. And the best thing: if you don't want to download it, you can order FREE CD's!!!
Every 6 months they release a new version and after a few years they have a big stable version that they support for a long time and then they start again with nothing.

I will agree with Hannibal, microsoft had to make changes to windows since they released windows XP (win95,98 and ME were not self-ruling operating systems, all of them had many DOS dependencies). The true is that I did not worked at vista yet (my PC is old to run vista) but I learned that vista has registry! I believe that windows registry is the biggest hole ever! I can't understand that an operating system can crash absolutely when a file is corrupted...Linux in opposite uses seperate files for every service and program running (known as .conf files) and there is no case to crash the machine if any of them be corrupted. Also, the multiuser support in windows is years back. For network use the windows is also many years back! Windows has made for games and other usually works, even server editions have no the abilities that an old linux system has. So, in my opinion there is no reason to wait when microsoft will update the windows if not change them from the base. People can't afford a thousand or more euros to buy a machine only to play games!
PS:I miss too ssh with windows but i found an ssh server and installed it :-)

thank u very much for ur interest hanni..and i totally agreewith ur thoughts about windows vista...yep i will try first suse 10.0 (turkish language support), later ubuntu and finally debian and mandriva one metisse for experts..
i know the best linux version is the one u created i guess.. hehe thats the best part of linux
i would love to share our experiences on Linux.
Take Care..

"Ubuntu" is an ancient African word, meaning "humanity to others". Ubuntu also means
"I am what I am because of who we all are".

I knew Ubuntu was African. They also say: "Ubuntu, Linux for human beings"
Ubuntu has also Turkish language support (even Swahili and Zulu are supported )
I only have experience with Ubuntu and Debian. I once tried Fedora, but that wasn't my thing. I haven't had time yet, but somewhere in the future I plan to compile my own kernel.
At the moment Ubuntu is my favorite. It's so easy and very well supported. Even DELL is selling computers with Ubuntu :-) Another good thing is that it also works very well on laptops, which is not so well supported by other linux versions.
I know a guy who uses gentoo, he was busy for 48 hours to make it like he wants I said he had to try Ubuntu, and now he uses it too, coz it's easier and almost even powerful as his own creation.

And then there is DSL, linux distribution of only 50 MB

P.S. look at this, list of most popular distributions

wooww
hehe i gonna divide my hard disc into three and then one part is ready for UBUNTUUUUU.. lol thank u hanniiiii.

Be carefull Schizo when installing linux and windows in the same disk (even in different partitions). There is a possibility that windows will not boot after that and need fixboot and fixmbr with recovery console. This happened because linux write its boot manager over the windows's one. In my opinion, if you are not advanced user, it's better to install linux in other hard disk and and when you want to boot linux, press F12 (in most motherboards) to choose the boot order and choose the disk from where you want to boot. If you split the disk in three partition, let windows at the first one (at the left side of disk) because windows has often problem if not installed at the first partition, linux can boot from anywhere and there is a possibility to write master boot record (MBR) even in floppy disk and boot it only when floppy is in drive. This is the most secure solution to avoid problems with windows installed in the same disk and when you become familiar you make your own boot manager to choose wich operating system you want to boot. I did not work with ubuntu yet but i have experience with older versions of linux (red hat, slackware, suse and fedora core later) and the boot manager was often problem at that time. The last 2 years I work with freebsd that in my opinion is more stable in server configuration but not for every day use for a simple user.
Good luck!!
(sorry for my bad english)

I can reassure you, there is no problem with Ubuntu
I have Windows and Ubuntu on the same disk. I have 4 partitions...

The first partition is a primary partition (and ntfs) where I installed Windows. Like papanestor said, Windows should be installed at the first partition. Also it is important to install Windows first, and then linux. Linux (ubuntu) recognizes other operating systems, Windows only recognizes other windows (no linux or whatever else).
My second partition is a logical partition that exists of 4 subpartitions (3 for windows, 1 for linux). The first subpartition contains my swap for windows (virtual memory) and is fat32, the second are my documents and is ntfs, the third is a partition with backup files and it is vfat because then it is writable by linux. So I also use it to exchange files from linux to windows and reverse. Linux cannot write in ntfs, sorry, couldn't, coz it is possible at the moment, but I still don't do it (i think windows could do very nasty about it ). The fourth subpartition is my home-partition of linux.
Then the 3rd primary partition is the root partition of linux and the fourth is my swap partition of linux.
Ubuntu helps you very good with making those partitions for linux.

When you install ubuntu, it will recongnize windows and then it asks if you want to put the boot loader in the first partition. You can say 'yes'.
When you restart, there will be a new boot menu with ubuntu in the list, but also windows. If you want, you can change the boot menu very easily (ask me for help if needed).
BUT if you remove windows, then you will have a problem. You need to restart windows with your windows cd and then you need to fix the master boot record (mbr) and then everything will be fine again :-)

Greetz,
Hanni

hi guys

i ran vista in beta 2 and it wasnt too bad, however when they released the beast onto the market it was way to slow, they were supposed to release a service pack about now but have postponed it until early next year when that is released i think we will see a much better Vista

Regards

Allan (409)

I think everyone has the wrong impression of Vista.

I've been running Vista with very few problems since January of this year. I've been able to do everything, plus some on top of what I could do with XP. At first I had my doubts about it, but honestly I love Vista.

I think everyone should use Vista for at least 1 month before making any comments/concerns about problems or issues with Vista from what they've read.

The only reason I would tell someone to not get Vista right now, would be if their system were older and couldn't handle the higher power consumption of Vista.

I don't say there are problems with running Vista, my brother has it since March and he didn't have any problem yet.
Like you say, it is not recommended to get vista with an older system and that says (for me) enough. With every new windows version, it is necessary to upgrade your hardware. That's ridiculous... For the few things you could do more with vista than with XP, you need double RAM (or even more). And you have to pay a lot of money for it, while there are better operating systems that are free.

We dont had the coice. We bought an Laptot and there was Vista just installed. But it works good. I would change to XP if i could.

Why not to Linux

Linux makes problems with flash banners hihihi.

I have Vista for some time now and i havent had problems with it in a looong time. But i do have Windows Vista Ultimate.

And it looks fancy too hihih.

=S|G=Perisher wrote:

Linux makes problems with flash banners hihihi.

Only Ubuntu has problems with it, but it seems to be solved with adobe flash player 10