The Second Coming of Vista: Microsoft Strikes Back

[Milleman]

Yepp...
Don't we just hate all the DRM shit in Vista...!

Vista is a gaming and DRM multimedia platform. An XBOX 360 for the PC hardware.
Nothing more, nothing less. I want a real O/S that is clean from DRM and only deal with the stuff I want it to deal with. That is why I moved to Linux instead of converting to Vista. If I wanna play a game...? Then I just use the 360. It cost me less to purchase a 360, than to do all necessary upgrades just to do the same things in Vista, as I've already been doing in XP.

For now on... For real tasks, I'll use Linux. For games, I turn on Xbox!

 

[Guest]

IMHO, Vista exists for two reasons. Because MS can't justify jacking up the price of XP sufficiently to make the coming "keep paying for it every year/month/day/second or we'll shut you down" plan to appear to be a bargain. And because the XP driver model doesn't provide sufficient hooks to allow the level of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) required by MS and other industry players to enforce the coming "keep paying for it every year/month/day/second or we'll shut you down" plan. Congratulation bf2gameplaya for having a clue.

Apparently being an industry analysts doesn't require having the ability to do simple analysis as it was only a couple of days ago that Mr. Enderle was telling us that the new "Equipt" software service model (read: keep paying for it every... you get the point) for Office should be applied to the OS as well since it would be more attractive than the high purchase price. Hello? Rental looks attractive because the price is so high? Try again. The price is so high in order to make rental appear attractive. Could you be any more gullible? Now he appears to be falling into another MS trap. "If we realease a real steaming pile of @%#$ and let it bake in the sun for a while then we can chip away some of the really nasty stuff on the outside and convince sheeple that what remains is a nugget of gold." As if!

Here's a little analysis of my own:
Step 1: Embed DRM, price it high and make sure it leaves a real sour taste in sheeple's mouths (might as well come up with a new D3D version that's not compatible with previous OS so our friends in the game industry can inspire sheeple to ?want? it too).
Step 2: Take away some of the sour taste so sheeple will be happy with what remains (it's all about relativity - see next step).
Step 3: Offer it as a service at an attractive price (let's say purchase price divided by ten since we can't have a significant number of people who still want to purchase - see next step).
Step 4: Remove purchase to own option based on market research indicating insignificant uptake (most don't keep an OS for more than ten years).
Step 5: Don't be raising the service rental price - there are better ways to screw people out of their money.
Step 6: Now that we have the sheeple's credit card info and our locked-down DRM infested platform is already calling the mothership every year/month/day... to ensure the money's still flowing, let the games begin.

I'd love to let sheeple use their imagination here but apparently they don't have any... here are some of my thoughts. We don't want people to be able to rip MP3s from CD anymore so let's provide them with a driver/DRM update that takes that ability away from them. It's not like they have a choice in the matter, they can either take the monthly update or we'll shut them down (although we should wait until they figure out how to contact us to complain before we stop taking money from their credit card). Want to play a DVD you've already paid for? That was just the cost of the physical media (or download), now you get to pay for every viewing too. Instant messaging used to only cost a monthly fee to an ISP but now you can pay for every message you send or receive (why should the cell phone providers have all the fun/income? We have your credit card info - you have no choice in the matter). Don't like our latest and greatest DRM technology? Tough nuggies, it's all or nothing baby!

In summary: "Vista, it's better than XP." Better for whom? Apparently it's better for Mr. Enderle but one can only speculate what the reasons for that might be. I, for one, don't believe that simple-minded naivety exists in sufficient quantities on this planet for that to be the reason.

Flash

PS The light at the end of the tunnel? That's the MS gravy train, and apparently there aren't enough actual analysts left to derail it.

 

[hellwig]

"Vista works much better with patches and SP1". Do you people know where those patches and updates come from? They come from the millions of idiots who click "Yes, Share my Data with Microsoft" after a program crashes. You pay $200-500 for a new OS, and THEN the company gets free testing from you too. You sit around for months complaining about how aweful something is, then when the company finally releases an update, you say "Oh, this isn't so bad". Of course it's not bad, they waited to see which problem bothered you the most, then fixed that one problem.

MS makes crap, sells it to millions of people, then slowly fixes only the problems that caused the most grief to the most people. This isn't a business strategy. If they didn't have over 90% of the market, Vista never would have seen the light of day.

Do you buy a car, and slowly wait for the recalls to fix the stuttering engine, bad brakes, improperly working blinkers? No! Why do you do it with a computer/OS? Personally I wait a couple years before I'm forced to move to a new OS on my machine (i.e. when Hardware and Software are mainly written for the new OS). I doubt, however, that day will ever come with Vista, not with the next Windows scheduled for 2010.

 

[Mante]

[citation][nom]jobhead[/nom]the only people that use macs are arty farty wanks that dont have the brain power to operate windows, very sad , xp is a sh*t tin better than any apple os[/citation]
You have no idea what you are talking about, where the fu** do you think programers work???? windows??? hahahaha. (noob)

 

[elbert]

Vista does have some good eye candy but what else? Microsoft has tied its own hands with its less than usable 8GB and 16GB max on home versions. Thats the 64bit version not the most worthless of all times Vista 32bit with no future. This is the first OS Microsoft has made that on launch cant even support the max amount of RAM that a motherboard can hold. Check out the old ECS 32GB AM2 motherboards. Not the new AM2+ the old AM2 from ECS. Ill use XP until 4GB isn't enough RAM and maybe by then Microsoft will come off its high horse and create an OS with some future value in mind.

Point is 18 months past XP's max RAM life on the 8GB version isn't worth $90. The 36 Months past XP's max RAM life on the 16GB version is almost worth $110 if not for all the bugs and being an OEM for only a single system. Unlike XP's 32bit memory addressing limiting us to 4GB's this is Microsoft ensuring sales by limiting future compatibility.

 

[elbert]

Vista does have some good eye candy but what else? Microsoft has tied its own hands with its less than usable 8GB and 16GB max on home versions. Thats the 64bit version not the most worthless of all times Vista 32bit with no future. This is the first OS Microsoft has made that on launch cant even support the max amount of RAM that a motherboard can hold. Check out the old ECS 32GB AM2 motherboards. Not the new AM2+ the old AM2 from ECS. Ill use XP until 4GB isn't enough RAM and maybe by then Microsoft will come off its high horse and create an OS with some future value in mind.

Point is 18 months past XP's max RAM life on the 8GB version isn't worth $90. The 36 Months past XP's max RAM life on the 16GB version is almost worth $110 if not for all the bugs and being an OEM for only a single system. Unlike XP's 32bit memory addressing limiting us to 4GB's this is Microsoft ensuring sales by limiting future compatibility.

 

[Guest]

Well I really can't take anything an IT "Professional" has to say as truth, i've been screwed more times and given wrong advice and information by IT guys than i care to count and if it weren't for the fact that all of my work computers have administrative rights held only by the IT guys i would have a much quicker, and problem free machine.

At home on the other hand Vista has been great for me. I have had no problems with the operating system at all, and this includes everything from gaming, networking, to using my 8800 ultra in the CUDA environment to run computer aided cancer detection on mammograms (part of graduate work in biomedical engineering) which I assure you is both cpu and graphics intensive and vista has worked exactly how it should. The only grief i've ever had with it were the security pop ups which once disabled gave me a wonderful user experience

 

[Mr_Man]

I use Ubuntu...

 

[dankmess]

Just a thought...

Anyone who is reading this article is an "IT Guy"...

So stop saying in your comments that you're an "IT Guy." You're just as discreditable as the author of this editorial.

 

[Guest]

Now will someone please throw a chair???

 

[hoihoi8]

I got nothing against Vista. There is just no reason for me to upgrade to Vista. My work development tools are built for XP and are buggy on Vista. All games look just as good in DX9 as they do in DX10 (developers fault). So yes if you buy a new computer and it comes with Vista I'm sure you will be happy. Now going from XP to Vista is nowhere near worth more than $20 for me.

 

[hoihoi8]

I got nothing against Vista. There is just no reason for me to upgrade to Vista. My work development tools are built for XP and are buggy on Vista. All games look just as good in DX9 as they do in DX10 (developers fault). So yes if you buy a new computer and it comes with Vista I'm sure you will be happy. Now going from XP to Vista is nowhere near worth more than $20 for me.