SlashGear

4 Responses to “Apparently Microsoft Windows XP Is Far From Dead”

1. 

   Rory Christensen July 24, 2007

   

   I am somewhat sadened by your lackluster interpretation of Windows Vista. Yes granted it has some bugs in it, some pretty annoying ones at that, but on the whole there are a lot of fundamental technologies in vista that are so much further ahead than XP! By the sounds of your review (biased to say the least) you have not even experienced vista your to busy clinging to the edifaces of the past,(windows xp).
   Granted it was not worth the 5 year wait and the WOW factor is nothing to be excited about, and I even myself had an element of trepidation when I went to upgrade but once I did and did so with an open my benifits were immediately clear, lets list some shall we
   Lets use windows ultimate as a casing point

   - User Interface does not looks like a kids toy anymore
   - DIRECT X 10 now thats wow check out crysis scaling on dx10 big dif to dx 9
   - The following are augmented natively into the OS with no 3rd party apps.
   (the entire networking stack has been rewritten and is a lot more responsive)
   – To set up a home network on vista is a dream by comparison to XP, auto diagnostics and configuration of the network wizard is superior to windows XP, full native 802.11 intergration.
   - Admin Tools are a lot more well planned out, and UAC along with being able to assign designated true standard or admin accounts is truely a blessing to any network admin.
   - windows mobile is now tightly intergrated with the OS (no more ugly active sync)
   - security security galore that I am not going to bother writing down.
   - Dreamscene does work really well if your running it on an 8800gpu full animated backgrounds of anything you desire is something to impressed by especially on a 30 inch LCD monitor.
   - run linux application natively, which blew me away that feature is fantastic.
   - seamless intergation of media on all computers in the home through media player 11
   - media centre comes natively with the OS
   - yada yada yada yada there is so much more to mention but I am at work and out of time.

   And no I am not a microsoft employee but I am an MCSE just looking to have my life made a little easier! Vista will most certainly do that on the networking element!

   -

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2. 

   James Allan Brady July 24, 2007

   

   Biased? Not really. Inexperienced with Vista? maybe more so than yourself, but i was in the beta ever since build 5308 and i ordered the free upgrade kit for my new HP computer when the official OS was released.

   i gave the OS a little over a month on my HP and up until i got my HP i couldnt even install it on any of my other computers due to driver issues.

   so i am going to try and address all of your points, not saying you are wrong, just showing you what its like from my point of view

   1. the UI looks more like a kids toy in some areas and less in others, navigating the settings screens and the control panel to actually get anything done is nearly a joke for me, yeah i probably would have gotten the hang of it, but i gave up. another alternative is switching to classic (read: XP) mode.
   2. eye candy again, i am not a huge gamer, but from what i have read, most of them are sticking to XP until a really good DX10 only game comes out.
   3. the networking was nice and easy, i will give you that point, i actually was quite giddy when i saw how well it functioned and worked
   4. same as the previous one
   5. i dont know how much more planned out the Admin tools were, but they were definitely far more powerful and far more informative, this was another thing i did like about Vista.
   6. windows mobile support integrated or not makes no difference, either way its free and doesnt require a 3rd party app so this one is kind of a moot point.
   7. lots of security? sure, but it has its (quite annoying) downsides, yeah you can turn some of it off to lessen the annoyance, but then you are taking away some of the security.
   8. Dreamscene is Vista Ultimate-only feature, how many people have $500 for that OS instead of a hardware upgrade(which is necessary on most PCs to run Vista) also it goes back to the eye candy thing.
   9. i never experienced the native linux App support, that does sound quite nice though, if it actually works as well as it’s supposed to.
   10. seamless media integration? i kinda like the seams there are in XP, i am not a big fan of having everything automatically connected for me. and media player 11 is available for XP too, i actually use it because i like the quick search feature.
   11. i have xp media center edition, problem solved

   i have also installed the desktop search bar utility for XP because i also liked that about Vista

   what i didnt like about vista primarily was the fact that it was killing my machine, i like music and other media and a lot of the processes that start running when you are playing media were drastically draining my system resources. the first thing i do when i sit down at a computer is start playing music, when that function begins to bring my brand new dual core CPU 2gig RAM Sata HDD system to a creeping halt, there is a problem. i could not play music and do much of anything else. and it kept my hardrive working at max load pretty much 100% of the time

   so i will concede that there is a lot more to Vista than eye candy, there is in fact a lot i like about it, but it has a long way to come before i will trade XP for it.

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3. 

   Rory Christensen July 24, 2007

   

   Although you have made a convincing argument with many valid points although some are wrong, your sort of missing my point still. What I am attempting to convey is you cant just suggest to the masses stay with XP and dont go to Vista, even though this is clearly your own opinion the majority of the population are sheep and form their opinions on what others say rather than acquire the facts first hand and extrapolate from those experiences their own opinon. So to summise my point in short, if I were to of listenened to your opinion I would of missed out on a so far great overall experience with Windows Vista in my home environment.
   Here is my experience to elaborate as to why I have an issue with your article.
   I have 2 desktop pcs with premium, 2 laptops one with premium one with basic, and my PC running vista ultimate. All various hardware specifications all sharing our 802.11g home network. From the get go the networking was a dream I was impressed to say the least, in our house we can instantly (well as fast as 802.11g permits) share our digital media between all our computers by either transferring those files across using our shared public folders for each machine, or stream in real time! YES REAL TIME! our media from each other computers. For example my brother has access to my entire media library in a flash through media player 11, he can watch my videos, listen to my music, or even view my pictures without having to actually copy those files to his Laptop. This is great because he can watch any movie he wants without bogging down his tiny laptop hard drive. Its great any movie or music I download he can watch in a heartbeat in the privacy of his own room. This is just one example of many, the rest I am not going to list its to much of a laborious process.
   I have also now installed Vista on 30 plus machines for various clients who ask me to build them new machines with OEM vista licences and not one! NOT ONE! has complained about their machine being slow or sluggish and a lot say in terms of launching apps its faster! Now granted this is because vista is more secure and less spyware and better security mean their computers are not on the virge of dying. But as you can see its beeen a better user experience for them and after all is that not what its all about? And dont get me started on the home networking again they all share my consensus on that, why some of these people have even set up entire networks themselves with no prior computer knwoledge at all! NOW THATS TESTIMATE TO HOW EASY THE VISTA NETWORKING IS! plug it all in and vista confgures the rest! Its scary I have lost work from clients being able to set up for the first time home networking infrastructure on their own.

   So in conclusion as you can see it really comes down to being “situation specific” so you cant tarnish windows vista to the masses just because you have had a negitive experience with it.
   For many I would think it to be highly advantageous to switch to vista, others perhaps not.

   Now lets clean up some of your misiformed points you made:

   Lets start with gaming:
   Firstly being poor or having insufficent funds to acquire the latest technology is not an excuse to say windows vista is bad for gaming which is the real excuse for a lot of people. Yes you do loose frames in some games on vista compared to xp, but that is largely due to poor drivers on nvidia’s and ati behalf not vista itself. Most people are staying with XP because the Directsound API has been ripped from Vista which means any game engine that uses the Directsound API will only come out in stereo in vista, and in some cases not at all unless you purchase the latest creative XFI soundcard and use OpenAL then it works flawlessly. Its not such much an issue of graphics but an issue of sound, I do understand why micorosft did this though I suggest you research why they have if you wish to know.
   Again though if you have the money its not an issue, I have an xfi and OpenAL works bridges the problem beautifully. And may I say crystaliser on the XFI makes an MP3 sound incredible!Creative have outdone themselves with the XFI in every respect.
   “from what you have read” hrmmm looks like someone has been listening to the opinions of others rather than getting the cold hard facts themselves.

   Secondly Networking:
   This one is really quite simple! If you dont like to share all your media with other people on you home or business LAN just go to Network and sharing Centre and make your connection public, click off to file sharing and media sharing and your done.
   But non the less windows Vista gives you the flexibility to do either, its nice to have choice.

   So now thats all cleared up I bid you goodbye, I think I have clearly proven your ill informed article is flawed and you are concluding your opinions based on what others have said and not what you have experienced (in the gaming side of things atleast).

   I hope whoever reads this article and my feedback will now get a more balanced view so to speak, rather than just drawing the conclusion Vista is not up to scratch.
   Because if you want a home networking home with a rich digitial media experience you really are missing out! I am also beta testing windows home sever which will further that experience.

   Cheerio!

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4. 

   Rory Christensen July 24, 2007

   

   run unix apps natively not Linux apps that was my bad and I am ashamed I said that I wrote that in haste! LINUX nateively in WINDOWS! That will be the day! LOL

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