Beware Vista HYPE - DRM & Spyware

MadCowMan

j_davies wrote:

One thing that does annoy me is this,

Windoze
M$
Micro$oft

If you don't like it use Linux no ones forcing you, or make your own OS.

Their I said it

Likewise , I find it an unusually childish expression

Unless we can also refer to HippyTreeHuggingCardiganWearingLinux in the same sentence

superscaper

MadCowMan wrote:

Unless we can also refer to HippyTreeHuggingCardiganWearingLinux in the same sentence

You mean you don't already?

MadCowMan

I usually add 'PlasticShoeWearing' to be honest

I wont be rushing to upgrade to vista ( although its a no cost upgrade for my work laptop, ) not because I don't like it, but I've got better things to do !

Darksun

Tell me he isn't a damn hippy!

(for those who don't know, he's Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation which created the GNU public license that Linux and many other pieces of open source software are licensed under).

(Image credit: http://exposur3.com/ Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)

isgman

DOS Rules OK ...

superscaper

isgman wrote:

DOS Rules OK ...

I see your DOS and raise you Punch Cards. Made some once in primary school, but the only punch card sorting machine was the teacher himself holding a stick for picking out cards by their holes.

dag_2

One thing that bugs me about all this is that no-one's actually saying what Vista actually does. Does it do anything that XP (or other OS's) doesn't do - apart from have lots of bugs? From the best information I've been able to glean, the answer has been a big fat resounding NO!

So why bother with it?

The other day I walked past a branch of Currys Digital. It had big wall drapes with the word "Vista", the MS logo, a picture of a fairly ordinary laptop computer - and a price tag - £449 if I remember right. Maybe the word "bargain" or some other word signifying the concept of cheapness in general was on there too. But was there anything else? Do they have any other way of inducing me to shell out for it? Do they have anything telling us if there's anything good or useful about Vista? In fact, do they have anything at all to suggest that Vista is anything more than an overpriced gimmick with a cheap tacky poster with pretty colours on it? NO!

But do they have anything to say that they're still selling XP? Actually - no. And that's what I find more worrying.

To be honest, I find that the marketing for Vista is a major affront to my intelligence, even though it's limited as it is. And I am somewhat concerned about the evidence that Microsoft and their puppet retailers are exploiting customers who are even less intelligent or have more serious learning difficulties than me. I believe that a civilised society shouldn't just stand back and so blatently allow people to be ripped off, without intervening.

I think the high street stores ought to be shut down, and their nasty pushy salespeople should be given the sack. You get much fairer prices at the computer fairs, ready-made computers with OEM XP preinstalled, and with a spec that's good enough for gaming and multimedia for less than £100. Maybe even £50 for a slightly lower spec but still with a fully legit XP. And the vendors are all nice, and not pushy! To be honest I don't know why anyone still goes to the high street.

sco0ter

dag wrote:

One thing that bugs me about all this is that no-one's actually saying what Vista actually does. Does it do anything that XP (or other OS's) doesn't do - apart from have lots of bugs? From the best information I've been able to glean, the answer has been a big fat resounding NO!.

The currys next to me has an interactive demo showing movies of all the different features between XP and Vista as well as a few PC's with different versions (home,premium,ultimate) for you to try as well. It shows all the basic differences right up to the very techie differences as well..

dag wrote:

So why bother with it?

The other day I walked past a branch of Currys Digital. It had big wall drapes with the word "Vista", the MS logo, a picture of a fairly ordinary laptop computer - and a price tag - £449 if I remember right. Maybe the word "bargain" or some other word signifying the concept of cheapness in general was on there too. But was there anything else? Do they have any other way of inducing me to shell out for it? Do they have anything telling us if there's anything good or useful about Vista? In fact, do they have anything at all to suggest that Vista is anything more than an overpriced gimmick with a cheap tacky poster with pretty colours on it? NO!.

Same reply as above... But also its not up to them to convince you its (as a few people point out) up to you to see if you NEED it.... People will want it because its new... I will hold off untill it has a bit more gaming support then I will be purchasing a new PC with it installed..

dag wrote:

But do they have anything to say that they're still selling XP? Actually - no. And that's what I find more worrying.].

The same store still has XP on the shelves but it is not any cheaper and for a few quid more you can get the latest.. They are also selling off all thier XP base units with reductions like £20-£50.

dag wrote:

To be honest, I find that the marketing for Vista is a major affront to my intelligence, even though it's limited as it is. And I am somewhat concerned about the evidence that Microsoft and their puppet retailers are exploiting customers who are even less intelligent or have more serious learning difficulties than me. I believe that a civilised society shouldn't just stand back and so blatently allow people to be ripped off, without intervening..

Do you have any evidence that Microsoft are ripping people off??? the same could be said about car dealers. A company is always going to promote its newest product and if people blindly go into it not knowing what they want then surely that is thier own fault..

dag wrote:

I think the high street stores ought to be shut down, and their nasty pushy salespeople should be given the sack. You get much fairer prices at the computer fairs, ready-made computers with OEM XP preinstalled, and with a spec that's good enough for gaming and multimedia for less than £100. Maybe even £50 for a slightly lower spec but still with a fully legit XP. And the vendors are all nice, and not pushy! To be honest I don't know why anyone still goes to the high street.

Convienience.?? You may get better prices elswhere with XP installed but then you get better prices on an original XBOX compared to an XBOX360.. It all boils down to the same thing.. XP is getting old... Microsoft will stop support some day and newer games will not be shown to thier full potentiall on XP.. If people just want to surf the net and use it for work then Windows 98 is just as good as XP.. If people spend money on thier PC for games then Vista will by far outshine XP..

Zagu

dag wrote:

One thing that bugs me about all this is that no-one's actually saying what Vista actually does. Does it do anything that XP (or other OS's) doesn't do - apart from have lots of bugs? From the best information I've been able to glean, the answer has been a big fat resounding NO!

I spoke to an IT friend about this, and the one thing he was most impressed with was the fact that you can roll back individual files, which is very useful for when things go pear shaped.

Anyway, heres all the Features new to Windows Vista.

Will I get it? Well, its very cheap compared to what 95, 98 and XP were, but I dont see any need at the moment. The compatibility also needs sorting out, but I dare say that Ill have it in a year or two. I dont think that anyone is going to make us buy it.

wolfman

dag wrote:

The other day I walked past a branch of Currys Digital. It had big wall drapes with the word "Vista", the MS logo, a picture of a fairly ordinary laptop computer - and a price tag - £449 if I remember right. Maybe the word "bargain" or some other word signifying the concept of cheapness in general was on there too. But was there anything else? Do they have any other way of inducing me to shell out for it? Do they have anything telling us if there's anything good or useful about Vista? In fact, do they have anything at all to suggest that Vista is anything more than an overpriced gimmick with a cheap tacky poster with pretty colours on it? NO!

The laptop would no doubt be £449 if Vista didn't exist and XP was still the main OS about. If you're buying a PC, it'll generally come with Vista as it's the latest OS. You'll find that prices haven't changed very much, if at all.

dag wrote:

To be honest, I find that the marketing for Vista is a major affront to my intelligence, even though it's limited as it is. And I am somewhat concerned about the evidence that Microsoft and their puppet retailers are exploiting customers who are even less intelligent or have more serious learning difficulties than me. I believe that a civilised society shouldn't just stand back and so blatently allow people to be ripped off, without intervening.

Again...prices haven't really changed. The hardware is still sold as normal, just a different OS ships with it. You make it seem that since PC's now have Vista they've risen hundreds of pounds in price...which they haven't.

dag wrote:

I think the high street stores ought to be shut down, and their nasty pushy salespeople should be given the sack. You get much fairer prices at the computer fairs, ready-made computers with OEM XP preinstalled, and with a spec that's good enough for gaming and multimedia for less than £100. Maybe even £50 for a slightly lower spec but still with a fully legit XP. And the vendors are all nice, and not pushy! To be honest I don't know why anyone still goes to the high street.

Fairs haven't been beneficial for about 5 years. Maybe around 199x-2002, but since then the big retailers can offer much better deals. And I'd have to question your "a spec that's good enough for gaming and multimedia for less than £100". Maybe for games built in the last millennia, but not now.


As usual though, there's a lot of Vista bashing from people that have never actaully used of tried the operating system. Nor researched into how it differs from XP.

I'm not necessarily saying it's something everyone has to have, as most XP user won't need it. If you get a free upgrade, or purchase a new PC and it comes with it then Vista is great operating system to use. I currently use Linux at home, but at work get to use Vista (for IIS 7) and it's excellent.