Windows Vista Presentation = Fail

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  • AndrewT
    Administrator
    • Mar 2004
    • 3653

    Windows Vista Presentation = Fail

    I just had to share this story with you guys...

    I attended a presentation this morning and as one of the demos was going to be shown, Vista died with a blue screen of death. Right when the PC rebooted Vista reported that Windows Explorer had crashed. We all got a good chuckle out of it. I could barely contain myself. That has to be some of the worst luck ever.

    I'll be sticking to Ubuntu.
  • Frank Hagan
    Senior Member
    • Mar 2004
    • 724

    #2
    I attended a large show put on for VARs several years in a row here in the LA area, and one year Microsoft was touting some kind of inter-operability between Windows 3.1 and something else ... I don't remember the specifics, but the Microsoft rep really built up the fact that you could simply take a disk from the other app, walk over to a Win 3.1 machine and work with the document. He picked up the disk, walked in front of the 10' projection of the Windows desktop, stuck in the floppy, and the system crashed. The room exploded in laughter.

    I'm looking at Ubuntu now; I have it installed on an old machine I'll probably use as a media server. Its actually a pretty nice shell on top of Linux, but the only thing holding me back is driver support from the peripheral people. I'm sure that will come in the next couple of years; its growing like crazy.

    We're thinking of picking up one of the new HP 2133 Mini-Notes in a month or two to take on trips, and I'm already decided that I'll take it with the offered SUSE Linux (and maybe replace SUSE with Ubuntu; I don't know if Novell has ruined SUSE or not). HP is offering it with Vista, and I just can't imagine how much it would slow the poor little thing down.

    I also heard that after the SP1 for Vista, that's probably it. They are looking at Windows 7.0 now after Vista, making it more like Windows ME than the XP-killer they envisioned. My company (at my real job) buys systems with Vista, saves the license and rolls them all back to Windows XP. So even the sales of Vista-equipped machines doesn't equal the actual systems in use. We have about 30 "Vista laptops" all running XP.

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    • AndrewT
      Administrator
      • Mar 2004
      • 3653

      #3
      I've only been using Ubuntu on my main PC for about 8 months now. I have no plans to change back. I don't play any games (on PC at least) so that really isn't an issue as it can be for some.

      Though I still got XP on my new laptop that I recently picked up. It's just not worth the time (to me) to try and get all the hardware working properly under Ubuntu for as little as I use it. Particularly all the add on buttons for functionality, my AT&T wireless card, etc.

      Hopefully Windows 7 won't be the joke that Vista has been thus far. Though to be perfectly honest - I've not even used it once

      My wife picked up an iMac late last year and I've learned that I strongly dislike OS X as well. It is always causing some sort of problem and won't shutdown, programs hanging, etc. Every time I need to use it I end up yelling at it as if that is going to help. The yelling doesn't fix servers either. I just don't understand why.

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      • Frank Hagan
        Senior Member
        • Mar 2004
        • 724

        #4
        Windows and Mac OS both have the same problem for me ... the "man behind the curtain". You never know what is really happening because they hide all the gory details from you. There's a learning curve with each one to find out what's running in the background, etc. My sister and brother in law have a Mac because its the standard in their industry, and I host both their sites. Every time they have a problem that's related to the Mac, they tell me "at least we don't have a PC!" But they have as many problems as any one else.

        I guess Vista has a new feature that asks permission from the user for common tasks. It works a bit like those "learning firewalls" that pester you with "is it OK to access the Internet?", except it doesn't learn and remember your permissions. The intent was to "pester consumers" so developers would quit writing applications that violated Microsoft's programming guidelines. You can turn it off, but then you are turning off an important part of the security system that is touted so much.

        I couldn't get Ubuntu to work with a D-Link USB wireless dongle; there are definitely some compatibility issues with hardware. I'm hoping that's solved by the time I build my next "main machine".

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        • J-G
          Member
          • May 2004
          • 54

          #5
          Ubuntu, Windows, etc.

          FWIW, the IT folks at the Large Multinational Corp. where I work plan to totally ignore Vista and wait for Windows v7.

          Question for you Ubuntu fans: is 800 MHz/256 MB RAM enough for Ubuntu? I got my free CD over a year ago and haven't tinkered with it yet. 'Tis the season - kids' baseball season, that is.
          กกก Jess G. กกก

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          • openbox
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2004
            • 238

            #6
            Originally posted by AndrewT
            My wife picked up an iMac late last year and I've learned that I strongly dislike OS X as well. It is always causing some sort of problem and won't shutdown, programs hanging, etc. Every time I need to use it I end up yelling at it as if that is going to help. The yelling doesn't fix servers either. I just don't understand why.
            It most likely won't change your opinion, but I've had my PowerBook for almost 5 years now; 10.3 upgraded to 10.4, upgraded to 10.5 and haven't experienced a single problem. Both hardware and software have been solid. Frank has a good point about "behind the scenes", but once you overcome the learning curve, you can look around OS X's BSD-based code and it isn't as "behind the scenes" as Windows IMO. Not quite as open as a Linux distro, but still pretty good. FWIW, I don't understand the draw to the iMac. Apparently a lot of people disagree with me because Apple continues to sell boatloads of them.

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            • AndrewT
              Administrator
              • Mar 2004
              • 3653

              #7
              Originally posted by J-G
              Question for you Ubuntu fans: is 800 MHz/256 MB RAM enough for Ubuntu? I got my free CD over a year ago and haven't tinkered with it yet. 'Tis the season - kids' baseball season, that is.
              I'm sure it will run but I think the 256MB of RAM might be the killer as far as performance goes. Just give it plenty of swap space (a couple GBs at least) if you do try it. I'd definitely download a newer release from their website though. I'm sure a lot has changed since the version that you have on CD.

              I have no doubt that you guys are probably right in regards to OS X. I just don't use it very much to begin with and when I do it is always under bad terms (fixing something). I think it is just made to be too pretty and user friendly for my tastes. The only thing I like about it is the command line which, due to its base, is far more useful than Windows and at least offers some amount of "complete" control.

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