Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Heaven forgive me for starting another thread on Vista but I find myself pondering the "moving on" of Microsoft's Zune project leader within a few months of that product's very disappointing release (although MS bravely claims that the Zune is "meeting expectations" -- have they hired some flacks from the Bush admin?) How could such a big, successful company so completely misunderstand a market they spent jillions of dollars trying to find a way to compete in? And now I find myself pondering Vista and wondering much the same thing, as I read more and more articles like this one: Windows Vista: The 'Huh?' starts now Mike Elgan February 02, 2007 (Computerworld) Microsoft is losing consumer operating system market share to Apple for many reasons, but most of those reasons can be oversimplified thus: Mac OS is simple, and Windows is complicated. That's why it may be such a costly error for Microsoft to make the Vista upgrade such a confusing mess.[snip]... Microsoft created this confusion by failing to tell anyone what the proof requirement would be for using an Upgrade version of Vista. Meanwhile, the Upgrade versions are poison:Windows power users know that if you want Windows to work well over the long haul, it helps to reformat and perform a clean install once in a while. The Upgrade version requires you to install both XP/2000 and Vista every time, doubling the already massive amount of time it takes to do a reformat/reinstall.The Upgrade versions require you to keep track of your original Windows XP/2000 disks. Most people have these in the form of "recovery CDs" from the PC vendor, which can include multiple disks full of junk applications.Using a copy of XP or 2000 as proof for the Upgrade version of Vista invalidates the XP key, according to Vista's End User License Agreement (EULA). The EULA states, in part: "Upon upgrade, this agreement takes the place of the agreement for the software you upgraded from. After you upgrade, you may no longer use the software you upgraded from." Some bloggers and newsgroup posters have speculated that you may not be able to use that "invalidated" XP license even for a dual-boot installation with Vista. Computerworld has contacted Microsoft for clarification on this and, at press time, has not received a response. In other words, this is yet another point of confusion about Vista. [Editor's note: Computerworld will provide an update when this information becomes available.]Many users have lost, or were never provided with, installation disks with their PC. Because they have XP or 2000 installed, they may decide to save money and buy an Upgrade version. If their disk later dies, or they need for whatever reason to reformat, they will then have to buy a second copy of Vista, this time, the full version. Ouch! In a few years, future PCs may have hardware components not supported by XP or 2000. If a user buys the Upgrade version now, then later buys a PC and chooses to transfer the Vista license to it, the XP/2000 installation required by Upgrade versions of Vista may prove troublesome.There is a widely published workaround that enables users to install Upgrade versions of Vista without XP. It involves, essentially, installing Vista twice. You can find the work-around in Computerworld's comprehensive Vista Upgrade Guide. Whether this work-around is considered by Microsoft as legitimate or a form of piracy -- like so much about Vista -- is still unknown. Too many versions When Bill Gates launched Windows 95 a dozen years ago, consumers understood what they were getting. It was a brand-new Windows, vastly superior to Windows 3.x, and came in exactly one version. PC users could just go to the store and buy it, take it home and install it, and they didn't need a doctorate to figure out how to do all this. Fast forward to this week. Windows Vista launched with 10 -- count 'em, 10 -- versions. Instead of giving us a simple new upgrade path to the future, they instead gave us a homework assignment. Here are the versions:Windows Vista Starter EditionWindows Vista Home BasicWindows Vista Home Basic UpgradeWindows Vista Home PremiumWindows Vista Home Premium UpgradeWindows Vista BusinessWindows Vista Business UpgradeWindows Vista UltimateWindows Vista Ultimate UpgradeWindows Vista Enterprise EditionFaced with this list, consumers are scratching their heads and asking: Which one should I buy? What's the difference? Why should I bother?...[snip] read the whole article: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=windows&articleId=9010188&taxonomyId=125&intsrc=kc_feat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members midimonk v3 Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 microsoft is a joke of the worst kind and the public is the punchline. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Well, I can certainly understand that gut reaction (I've had a few, myself) but I guess what I'm really getting interested in getting at here is something like: Just how could a company with so much riding on such an important product -- and while repeating the consensus wisdom that Windows often strikes people as "too complicated" and unwieldy -- come out with a new version that, at the very least, seems MORE complicated and an upgrade process that seems designed to vex already confused customers? If it hadn't been for the manifest utter cluelessness of the Zune launch I might have been persuaded that there might be some sort of inner rationale to the way Vista has been launched -- but at this point I think it may well be the sign that a once fearsome competitor has all but lost its sense of itself and its place in the marketplace. Mind you -- I am not a MS basher, to my way of thinking. I genuinely really like XP in most ways. (Security would NOT be one of them.) And, these days, I use a lot of MS development tools for my work developing databases for the desktop and the web. Some of their products are pretty darn good -- but many of them have areas where the same apparent cluelessness manifests... like the utter mess that is much of MS's dev documentation. I dunno... Is it just committee-think that's dragging MS down? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doug osborne Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Remember that there will be millions of new computers sold over the next few years, and all of those will come with Vista. Vista will have some significant advantages for audio and video production (if Microsoft and product developers don't screw it up too badly). Today, we have a small, small, minority of users who stick to W95 or W98. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, I guess, but WXP offers significant benefits for audio work over older OSs as long as application and driver development takes advantage of what it offers. In four years, there will be another tiny minority of users still on XP (or OS9, or Linux) for music production. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Well, I think one can make some important distinctions between XP and previous releases and between it and Vista. XP addressed a significant and persistent systemic problem with non-pro versions of Windows (ie, Windows "Home" as opposed to Windows NT and Windows 2000)... those earlier home versions were something of a hodepodge of 16 and 32 bit code and, while, given the givens, Win98 proved to be a pretty stable OS, it could be brought to its knees by a poorly written application. By moving "Home" versions of Windows to the same (mostly) fully 32 bit codebase as Win 2000, MS increased the stability and robustness of the home versions tremendously. Additionally, as long as one had sufficient RAM, XP actually ran as fast or faster than Win98 in many ways, making an upgrade -- even on an existing machine -- relatively painless, as long as there were drivers available for all your devices. (And MS and the 3rd parties did mostly yeoman work in getting those drivers ready for the roll-out. Also, MS had a utility that, in my use of it proved very helpful in pinpointing just where I might have problems (two 'minor' devices -- both of which were better supported by MS than by the manufacturers, Intel and HP! HP, particularly, really hosed the people who bought my scanner, and it may have only been MS's work that provided me ANY remaining capability with it, despite the fact that it was released within 6 months of the roll out of XP, but I lost the entire "productivity suite" [OCR, etc] that came with the scanner thanks to HP's intransigence or inattention.) Now -- I suspect that Vista will, in time, provide a solid and stable platform for a half-decade or so of desktop computing. If all goes well... But this has got me thinking more than ever that, eventually, desktop computing must move farther away from proprietary platforms and one-company "standards." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Today, we have a small, small, minority of users who stick to W95 or W98. That's incredible. I'm not disputing what you say at all, but Win95 is the reason I migrated to Mac!!!! (I use WinXP now as well as Mac OS. This makes me confused when I read Mac vs. PC debates, because I find myself saying, "Yeah...good point." and then "Oh, but that's a good point too..." ). (I am starting to use quotations to add more qualifiers to my posts, similar to Blue2Blue and MorePaul) (I just thought you'd want to know all this additional info) (Ken's mood today: odd) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 It is, I think, Ken, (you may well note [if you're paying attention {and I always suspect that few do to my somewhat convoluted posts}]) a very slippery slope... Win 95 was, indeed, a somewhat troubled roll-out (all the pieces of the new OS were most definitely NOT in place) but I was SO relieved by its relatively logical windowing/desktop system (after the UTTER MESS that was the Win 3.x desktop) that I fell in love at more or less first use. And, I have to say, since I've been hard on them in this thread, that MS deserves props for continuing to update Win95 even after the release of Win98. IIRC, as long as you had all your updates to W95, it was in almost all important respects -- except for the then-new FAT32 file system -- functionally identical to Win98. When I built a new machine and put an OEM copy of W98 on it, the transition for me was almost unnoticeable (although my stability was pretty extraordinary for those days -- 4 months straight without an OS crash, BSOD, or anything more than an occasional application crash. Not bad for a hodepodge, I have to say. PS... back to the slippery slope... I think my already convoluted thought processes have been substantially changed by thinking in terms of program coding... you'll note how I tend to include inline digressions in various forms of parenthetic subcomment -- as though they were embedded functions and subroutines... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 ) a very slippery slope... Yup, I'd agree! I believe I've met The Master!!! Fun writing!! Have I mentioned lately that you rule??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members midimonk v3 Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 just to add, i use Xp as well as Mac(even linux) and the way they treat customers is shocking at times this from personal experience.Computers are tools just like our DAW's Use the one that fits your work methodology and don't be afraid to try something new if you get bored. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 just to add, i use Xp as well as Mac(even linux) and the way they treat customers is shocking at times this from personal experience.Computers are tools just like our DAW's Use the one that fits your work methodology and don't be afraid to try something new if you get bored. Agreed on that (assuming you're not restricting that "they" to just MS, here) and I have to say that while I have a real fondness for XP (perhaps a slightly perverse fondness... ) my loyalty is to as open a form of computing as I can pull off and still not cheat myself. And maybe to my DAW. It's not perfect -- but I really like my DAW. But if a more or less fully featured version of that DAW came out for Linux or another open source *nix variant (or BeOS, I'm easy ) -- while I'd still have to maintain a Windows machine for my day job work -- I would be SO on top of that open source solution... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jon Gnash Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Go to the grocery store and look at hair shampoo. Read the fine print. Most of it is made by Procter & Gamble. In many cases even the plastic containers are the same except for the color of the bottle. Microsoft will never allow itself to have a complete monopoly; to do so would be a death sentence because of anti-trust lawsuits. As long as there is Microsoft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members marauder6666 Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Microsoft will never allow itself to have a complete monopoly; to do so would be a death sentence because of anti-trust lawsuits. As long as there is Microsoft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jon Gnash Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Vista will have some significant advantages for audio and video production. Can you give us an example? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jon Gnash Posted February 4, 2007 Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 That is why 10 years ago, MS put some money into Apple to keep it afloat. At the time it was dying, then Jobs came back, they released the original iMac , OS X, dont need MS money anymore, the rest is history. If MS hadnt bailed Apple, MS would have been carved up, due to the monopoly they would have had in the desktop OS market. Reciprocation Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 4, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 4, 2007 Synergy. So... I guess no one out there got a Zune, huh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rabid Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 I bought 3 computers for my agency this week. All with XP Pro ang all costing $500 each without monitor. While they will be great for XP Pro I don't think anyone of them will run Vista at acceptable speed. Further, I have not seen anyting about Vista that I need for the office. For XP, I know to buy PC's that come with "Pro" for the networking features. When shopping places like Office Depot or PCMall my choise of computers on the market is cut in half. It worries me that when Vista comes pre-installed on most computers I have to wade through 6 different versions of Vista and hope the computer I like has the version of Vista that I need. Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Pardon my ignorance... and laziness. But what the hell is a Zune? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted February 5, 2007 Author Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Pardon my ignorance... and laziness. But what the hell is a Zune? My best laugh of the freakin' week. You are a god, to me, philbo! And I thought I as aggressively out of touch with our hairbrain-today-gone-tomorrow commercial culture as a man could be. I take my propeller beanie off to you my friend, my new hero. I almost don't want to hip you up, in fact. It's a dungeons and dragons, goth-geek thing, I think. Don't worry about it. Go on with real life. Ignore the little men behind the curtains with their even smaller ideas. But... if you MUST know, turn your computer upside down and read this: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 I thought Zune was a science fiction story about spice or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rubber Lizard Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Pardon my joining this thread too late (that would be PMJTTTL i guess), but hell, I have something to say. Jon Gnash wanted specific examples of Vistas worthiness. The latest issue of... oh heck, it was either EQ or EM or Mix... had a great article on that very subject. It got me kind of interested, where before I was feeling really so-what about it. Then someone brought a release candidate to work. We installed it on a new, dual-core intel machine. Vista has this neat feature where it rates the machine on which it is installed on a scale of 1 to 5, I think. The new (business class) machine rated a 2.5. Ouch! Not sure how much of that low rating was because of the onboard video. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted February 5, 2007 Share Posted February 5, 2007 I thought Zune was a science fiction story about spice or something. I thought it was that movie with Sting in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 Originally Posted by blue2blue Windows Vista Starter EditionWindows Vista Home BasicWindows Vista Home Basic UpgradeWindows Vista Home PremiumWindows Vista Home Premium UpgradeWindows Vista BusinessWindows Vista Business UpgradeWindows Vista UltimateWindows Vista Ultimate UpgradeWindows Vista Enterprise Edition not really, more like: Windows Vista Home BasicWindows Vista Home Premium Windows Vista BusinessWindows Vista Enterprise Edition Windows Vista Ultimate starter is for lesser countries and not even being sold in the US i dont believe. its not a retail release. the upgrades dont count as versions, its either or... and if you cant upgrade w/o a prior XP install, i would recommend not getting the upgrade version [although that is all saw today at sams club, i know,.. computer superwarehouse] for HOME users, its basic or premium, and i would suspect premium with the MCE would be the better choice. so home users, PREMIUM. has the cool transaero, and home computing can certianly handle that with a decent machien. now business users... business version, OR enterprise. small business, get business version. larger corps, get enterprise. better deployment and part of MS software assurance program spreading out the cost over [usually] 3 years. i suspect business would be the best for a DAW application with no RAM limit like the Home Basic and Home Premium. the ultimate version, for those who want it ALL. this is the version i have been running. but im testing out the media center a lot on it. probably not BEST for a dedicated DAW, but im hardly running a dedicate machine right now, and works wonderfully so far. it got a 5.6 rating on the experience scale [due to a lesser video card, nvidia 7600gs]. i picked up the Zune to touch finally the other day and they have some package design issues i think to work out with that for it to become more popular. my wife has an iPod and never uses it.... i have no need for them either so i dont think i would need a Zune [or iPod]. im waiting for Media Center to be stuck into a dual din touchscreen system with 400GB HD on it and wireless network access so i can drive up to my house, connect to my internet, DL the songs/videos off my home media server and drive off. now THAT is revolutionary and innovative. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members alphajerk Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 oh and BTW, networking in vista is a wet dream. its SO EASY! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jon Gnash Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 (or AC3_SPDIF).Regards,MitchVista does not use 32-bit floating-point calculations by default everywhere in the audio system - even though the EQ article and the developer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members doug osborne Posted February 5, 2007 Members Share Posted February 5, 2007 How about letting Noel Borthwick of Cakewalk answer that: Vista for Music + Pro Audio: Exclusive Under the Hood with Cakewalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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